


Decade of Decadence

by gabesgoldwings



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 1920s, Adultery, Angst, Bootlegging, Canon-Typical Death, Co-Parenting, Dean is such a dad, Divorce, Fluff, Happy Ending, Kidnapping, M/M, Minor Character Death, Prohibition, Sam Has a Dog, The Great Gatsby AU, Toddler Jack Kline, extravagant parties, implied period-typical homophobia, mafia, rich people, some characters have different last names
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-07 10:57:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 51,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19207972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabesgoldwings/pseuds/gabesgoldwings
Summary: Based on The Great Gatsby.Before Sam Winchester moved to Long Island in the spring of 1922 to pursue bonds, he expected life to fall into monotony after only a few weeks: He would wake up, sell stocks, go to bed, and repeat. He found a shack to rent on a strip of land jutting out of Long Island and bought new bond books, then he made the move. With his fresh start set, he’s ready for the adventure. But an invite from his cousin, Castiel, and his wife leads him into a tangle of high life, and the strange history of his mysterious neighbor and his secrets begins to unfold. Sam has no idea, but he’s about to be drawn into a mess of affairs and plots, lies and loves. He may be ready for adventure, but he’s in no way prepared for the grand story he’s about to become a part of.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the 2019 SPN Movie Big Bang. I don't think I've ever had this much fun writing something. All of my friends know how much I love The Great Gatsby, so I jumped on the opportunity as soon as [Mal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalMuses/pseuds/MalMuses) suggested the MBB to me during my initial planning phases of this fic. The stylization is inspired by the novel and the movie, and if you're familiar with TGG, you'll recognize quotes and other tidbits. Months of planning went into this, and I'm so excited to finally share this with the world and to hopefully hear your feedback! 
> 
> Thank you to my wonderful beta, [Andromytta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andromytta/pseuds/Andromytta) for helping me out for 7 months. Thank you to [PieDarling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PieDarling/pseuds/PieDarling) for talking me through a lot of panic, and for coming in clutch at the end. And a major thank you to my wonderful, spectacular artist, [Sophia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glitchedwings). Check out the [art masterpost](https://idjitsaviors.tumblr.com/post/185579944361/heres-my-art-for-the-spn-movie-big-bang-my) and be sure to give all of the love. This wouldn't have been possible without them.
> 
> Enjoy!

The City That Never Sleeps. The Big Apple. The City of Dreams. Empire City. The Melting Pot. The Modern Gomorrah. No matter the name, New York City brought dreams to life for people from all over the world. In the spring of 1922, as thousands of people across the globe made their way to the city in pursuit of The Great American Dream, a young man named Samuel Winchester followed suit.

Hailing from a modest home and moderately wealthy family in Chicago, Illinois, Sam realized after attending New Haven that he had no intention of carrying on the family business. No matter how much his family insisted he would disappoint his relatives — despite not _wanting_ to disappoint his rumored great ancestors, the Dukes of Buccleuch — he couldn’t make himself follow in their footsteps. After his deployment in the Great War, he moved east to a neighborhood on Long Island aptly named West Egg. It took a few months of reasoning and convincing to his parents, aunts, and uncles, who all felt the obligation to pick his company, career, and home, but his father agreed to finance this new pursuit for one year.

Sam found a home in a weather-beaten, shack amongst Victorian mansions. At $80 a month, he snagged a breathtaking waterside view and a front-row seat to every party on the island. His original plans were to split rent with another man from his office but at the last minute, the company sent him to Washington and he never heard from him again. Upon seeing the size of the home, he decided it was for the better he lived there alone. His dog would be enough company to fill the entire cottage.

Thanks to Sam’s family, a job selling bonds had already been in place by the time he moved to the city and, with what little money he had to start, he bought a dozen books on bond sales and the stock market, hoping to kick-start his career. The red and gold spines sat erect on his bookshelf, taunting him with yet unvisited knowledge each time he passed the bookshelf in his sitting room. The business proved to be an easy one, even before indulging in everything these books offered, and it all proved dependent on his dedication and willingness to fib a little. Many employees had higher sales than he, but few—if any—were honest men with their customers. Sam preferred to keep his honor, informing potential buyers that no, it’s _not_ a good idea to put all their money into one stock. Or any stocks, for that matter.

From afar, West Egg appeared exactly as it sounded: Rather dull, with the only notable feature being the squished ends of the oval island that gave it the shape of an ostrich egg. Upon further inspection, however, one would see unruly parties held every night of the week until the sun came above the horizon. People could often hear the music from across the bay and sometimes even into the Valley of Ashes, making the city quiver and shake.

To one side of Sam’s small eyesore stood a building—he could hardly consider it a house, Sam decided—made from marble and limestone, stretching from wall to wall over three acres.

Ivy climbed up the marble tower, twisting around each edge and dipping into every crevice, allowing the mansion a more rustic quality than the shining stone would allow on its own.

The building of at least three tall stories loomed far above the bay in its backyard, and every night, hundreds of lights filled each window, lighting up the house like Coney Island and putting the Palace of Versailles to shame. In all of its immense glory, the mansion towered over Sam’s bungalow. It was none other than Mr. Veila’s mansion, an extravagant man with even more extravagant taste.

Mr. Veila — a mysterious man who everybody knew of yet nobody _knew_ — threw the most lavish of all parties. Every weekend, from Friday’s supper until Monday’s sunrise, people from all over New York State came to Veila’s mansion for exquisite champagne, music, and company. For better or for worse (he had yet to decide), this man lived next door to Sam.

The people who lived in West Egg made their own wealth through various business endeavors, stocks, or bootlegging, though none would admit to such a thing. And, as far as Sam cared, it hardly mattered _where_ one got their money, so long as they had it.

Located across a bay was an island similar in shape and size and nothing more. East Egg, the home of folks whose money ran as deep as their blood, was regarded as superior to its western counterpart. Mostly young heirs to large family fortunes lived there with their wives, and one such heir was none other than Castiel Kline, the second cousin of Samuel Winchester.

Kline came from one of the wealthiest and highest regarded families in all of North America. Like many other families, he had been the sole heir his entire life and therefore undertook significant criticisms from every member of his extended family. As expected of him, he married a beautiful young woman, heiress to her own family’s fortune, with whom he started a family. According to the last letter Sam received three and a half years before moving, Castiel and Kelly had a handsome son named Jack.

Sam had yet to hear about his second-cousin-once-removed until a call came to the telephone in his shack, inviting him to supper at the Kline household the next evening. “Oh, Jack will be there too, darling,” Kelly had gushed over the phone. “You simply _must_ meet him. He rides ponies now!”

 _Ponies?_ The thought of a toddler riding a pony left him confused for longer than he liked to admit, though he kept the befuddlement to himself for fear of looking foolish. After all, _he_ didn’t have children. What could he know of them?

The summer of 1922 truly began the evening that Sam drove to the glittering red and white palace in East Egg, overlooking the bay. It had been more elaborate than he expected, with a lawn that began on the beach and stretched a quarter mile to the door, through towering columns, vines that climbed the walls—though it was not nearly as extravagant as Mr. Veila’s ivy—and gardens five times the size of Sam’s own property. Stone walls two feet tall made their attempts to show the world where the Kline’s land stopped, but ivy adorned with purple flowers climbed across these walls and their nearby sundials, masking them from plain sight.

French windows lining the entire front wall allowed anybody to peek into the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Castiel Kline if they so chose, as if they hadn’t a secret to hide. Wide open with the late afternoon wind, the windows glowed with reflected gold from the low sun, and Castiel Kline stood on the front porch with his legs apart.

Not much had changed since they lived together in Chicago. His dark hair quit laying flat across his head every day and now stood straight up with the help of a gravity-defying paste, but the stern look in his gleaming, arrogant eyes was the same from their youth. Along with the line of sweat across his forehead, the riding clothes that barely contained the straining pack of muscles in his calves showed that he just finished with what Sam could only assume was a game of polo. This man didn’t seem large from afar. Up close, however, not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body.

The husky bass voice he spoke with boomed with power each time he opened his mouth. Even when they attended Yale together, Castiel had no issues commanding a room full of students and professors alike.

For a few minutes, they spoke on the porch under the beating sun of the early summer.

“Have you seen the house?” He asked, pivoting towards the double doors to enter the house.

“I haven’t.”

Castiel responded with a half-hearted nod, grabbing Sam by the shoulder to lead him through the entryway. Awards belonging to both halves of the couple covered the wall from floor to ceiling, ranging from polo to horse breeding and showing.

When he turned his attention back to the home’s owner, a silver statue in the shape of a horse filled his vision. He wondered, with a man this wealthy, if the trophy was genuine silver. It wouldn’t be a surprise, but it seemed so extravagant and over the top. That same booming voice tore him away from his thoughts with a proud proclamation: “Forest Hills, 1918. Played the Prince of Wales. And what a sissy he is!”

That _must_ be a lie. But he knew better than to question this man’s integrity, so he forced a laugh from his upper chest and continued looking around the room at the trophies.

Before Sam could read the awards further, a herculean force slammed him through the mahogany double doors into a rosy room with more open doors than he could count at first glance. The light poured in from every inch of the wall while translucent white curtains blew through the room like flags from their posts twelve feet off the ground. Through the curtain covering his eyes, he hardly caught a glimpse of the oversized chandelier in the center of the round room, made from glass as exquisite as diamonds, caught the rays of sunlight, glistening blindingly from every angle.

The silhouette of a young woman’s slender arms, covered with pearls that would glisten in the light, danced with the wind behind the flowing fabric, positioned near a stationary man on a large couch in the middle of the room. A laugh Sam hadn’t heard in years—an intoxicating laugh—filled the room and drew him close to the sofa where the owner of the voice lay all but hidden. The slam of the windows closing stopped the wind and stilled their surrounding objects, which ballooned to the floor like a cloth in the sea. No longer masked by the fluid silks, the two bodies on the sofa came into view.

The man was a stranger to Sam. The brim of his bronze hat hid his eyes when he cast his gaze downwards, and the color brought out the gold in his eyes when he returned his gaze to a motionless bottle on the bar across the room. His eyebrows, thicker than Sam’s own, knit together in the middle of his forehead, as if concerned for the half-full bottle of hard liquor.

Inches away was a much more familiar face: Kelly. One of her arms draped over the back of the stiff sofa, putting her astounding wedding ring on display, and her entire body rose until her head could rest on her arm, revealing only her sparkling green eyes and an eager smile that beckoned him closer. One step at a time, he approached the woman, returning the gentle smile.

It had been years since Sam and Kelly saw one another. Her family bought a building for Yale in New Haven before they sent her through the school for an art certificate, around the same time that Castiel and Sam attended. After getting the certificate, she married Castiel and moved to France with him for no particular reason. A year later and they returned to the states, restlessly drifting from city to city, with no time to visit an old friend. They had become strangers in the years that passed.

That was no matter. Her eyes stared into his own, with a tenderness that welcomed him home, and it felt as if he once again knew her and all her little secrets and habits and stories she’d never told another soul.

“I’m paralyzed with happiness,” she exclaimed with her thrilling voice as her old friend entered the room. A charming little laugh followed the apparently witty comment, drawing his attention towards her again—as if it could ever leave—and suddenly he knew why his cousin followed her around all these years. Each word from her lips was a promise she cared only for Sam at that moment; there was nobody in the world she would prefer to see. It couldn’t be true, yet she played the role so convincingly.

With one hand grasping Sam’s wrist, she tilted her head up to inform him in a murmur that the concerned man went by the name of Gabriel. If he overheard a whisper of his name, Gabriel showed no sign. His undivided attention seemed focused on his frozen posture. He couldn’t be looking at the bottle all this time, Sam decided. Maybe he didn’t know where his eyes were glued.

Just as the thought crossed his mind, he could have sworn he noticed Gabriel nod in acknowledgment, though the movement didn’t nudge a hair on his head out of place. Sam barely caught himself before he apologized to the stranger for interrupting whatever he interrupted.

He looked down at his arm, which still had Kelly’s grip around the wrist, then made eye contact with her. “I made my way through Chicago on the way here, you know? Stayed for about a day.”

Both of her eyebrows raised and the grip on his wrist tightened, pulling her friend closer until his body pressed all the way against the couch. “Do they miss me? They must be absolutely heartbroken, aren’t they?”

“I could barely sleep with the sound of their cries at night! They’re wailing, they’re moaning, they’re absolutely _mourning_ the loss of you,” Sam exclaimed through a teasing smirk, and Kelly responded with a melodic laugh from her belly that he followed up and down the scale. “Kelly Kline, they cry, we can’t live without you!”

With one firm tug on his wrist, he stumbled over the edge of the sofa and fell over both occupants on it, unable to stifle his laughter when his body slammed against the maroon rug on the floor. He laid there with wide eyes staring at the ceiling until movement caught the corner of his eye. For the first time, he could see all of the man lounging on the sofa, and his heart skipped in his chest. His eyes were a green deeper than the Amazon Rainforest with flecks of gold that begged him to inspect further - if only he didn’t feel fear for his well being by moving closer. The pinstripes lining his suit framed the man’s broad shoulders, and Sam couldn’t quite identify the base color of the three-piece. It felt warmer than black, perhaps with bits of bronze to match the brimmed hat on his head. Maroon tints that resembled the berry-colored tie around his neck presented themselves when the light hit the suit just right, but Sam realized it was irrelevant and he was staring.

Over Kelly’s hearty laughter and from the corner of the room nearest the bar, Castiel cleared his throat. “How is the bond business treating you, Sam?” His voice echoed in the unique shape of the room, and the man in question jumped up from the floor to brush off his tan suit.

“The bond business? Why, it’s fantastic! I’m getting customers from every walk of life, and they’re all making me money. In fact, they’re also benefiting from my sales 75% of the time.”

“75?”

“That’s right!”

“Then you’re being too honest to your buyers.”

“Well, it’s too early to really—”

“Every book I’ve read on the bond business says you’ve got to lie a little.”

Sam furrowed his eyebrows and shook his head. “I’m quite happy with my honesty. In fact, I pride myself most on it.”

“Castiel is right,” an unfamiliar voice decided. It was Gabriel, speaking for the first time since Sam entered the room, and—if the way he bolted upright after speaking was anything to judge by—the comment startled the speaker even more than Sam.

The man with the hat brushed off his own startle by standing abruptly and moving his muscles in sharp, sudden turns to stretch, allowing himself to yawn to wake himself. “I’m stiff,” he announced. “Been stuck on that tragedy of a sofa all day long.”

The married couple seemed to both roll their eyes in response and he spoke up first. “I tried all day to get you out of the house, Gabriel. We could’ve seen a show in the city, you know?”

Then Kelly added, “Or grabbed drinks at the Yale Club.”

As if he didn’t hear a word they said, he grabbed a cocktail from the platter in a butler’s hand and strutted toward one window to watch the setting sun over the bay. “Beautiful view, isn’t it?” Though his words seemed thoughtful, his tone did not indicate awareness to his own voice, unimpressed and unphased. Then, he spoke again. “You live in West Egg. Right across the bay.”

“I do.” Sam politely rejected the cocktail offered to him.

“I know someone on that side of the bay.”

“Really?” He paused. Did he know anybody in his own neighborhood? Nobody wealthy enough for a mansion at $8,000 a season dared speak with the unworthy man in the shack. “I don’t know a single person.”

As if offended by those words, Gabriel’s head shot over his shoulder to face the group. How he didn’t break his neck with the sharp movement was beyond Sam, and his time wouldn’t be well-spent considering such trivial matters. “You _must_ know Veila.”

The name made him perk up, inclining his head like it would help him listen. Sam knew about Veila, heard his name in passing many times, but he didn’t _know_ the mysterious man next door. They never met, and right as he prepared to say so, Castiel’s voice echoed through the room. “Veila?” He demanded. “What Veila?” When he looked at him, sadness deeper than the ocean, and he wondered about their history.

Before his curiosity could roam too far, a man in a black tuxedo came through the doors to announce dinner, then two sets of glass doors swung open to reveal a table on the patio. The white tablecloth swung with the wind, held in place by four plates, four wine glasses, and nearly a dozen candles in two circular holders.

Castiel took his seat at the head of the table with Kelly at the other end, while Sam and Gabriel sat across from one another on the long sides of the table. There was no waiting for the piping hot pork roast dinner or the shallow glasses of red wine, so Sam dug right into his meal while popping in and out of the conversations. “Do you want to hear a family secret, Sam?” Castiel had whispered just minutes into the meal, leaning closer as he did the same. “It’s about the butler’s nose.”

“That’s why I came over today.”

Despite their hushed voices, the declarations of East Egg’s superiority came to a halt beside them. Regardless of the prying eyes on him, he cleared his throat to begin the story. “He wasn’t always a butler; many years ago, he was a silver polisher. He worked for a small business in New York, run by a couple of young men. From dawn to dusk, the butler sprayed and polished and cleaned the silver for over two hundred people…” As the story progressed, his voice grew quieter, forcing his cousin to lean so far out of his seat that he had to catch himself before falling on his face.

Kelly rose to her feet with a cigarette between her lips when Castiel’s anti-climactic fable ended. Making her way behind her husband’s seat, she rested her hands on his tense shoulders and peered at her guests. She seemed to contemplate the thoughts bouncing around in her head until something forced everybody out of their own heads.

 _Brnng. Brrnnng._  

The telephone grew more intense with every ring. The noise appeared to haunt Castiel, and the name of the caller irked Kelly. “Mr. Rooney from the gas station,” came the faint murmur from the butler in the next room. Only a moment later, the same butler approached Kelly to whisper in her ear and she disappeared before Sam even noticed her move.

“If you’ll excuse me…” Castiel pushed his chair away from the table, straightening his riding clothes on his way into the house.

In their newfound privacy, Sam turned to face Gabriel. “That Mr. Veila you spoke of—”

“ _Sh!_ ” 

Gabriel leaned forward, shameless, trying to hear the impassioned conversation just through the glass doors. The couple’s voices rose and fell, shouting then whispering, until they ceased entirely.

“Mr. Veila, he’s my neighbor—”

“ _Don’t speak!_ I want to know what’s happening.”

Still clueless, Sam tilted his head to one side. He couldn’t hear their voices anymore, and her husband’s hulking body blocked Kelly from his angle. “And what, exactly, is happening?”

“Don’t you know? I thought _everyone_ knew!” When Gabriel saw the dumbfounded look still present on his face, he took a drag of his cigarette and exhaled a puff of smoke. “Kelly… she’s got a lover in New York. Used to have a wife of his own, but she passed, and-” He halted. Sam looked around to see if something happened in the last three seconds to cause this stop. He found nothing. Perhaps he got lost in the argument on the other side of the awfully thin walls.

Sam returned to his meal, grossly uninterested in the bickering of another couple, and sipped his wine. They would be back soon, as far as he could guess, and there was no point in attempting a discussion with the other man occupying the room.

A gust of frigid air that extinguished the candles on the table announced the return of Castiel and Kelly, who both appeared unphased. “I should show you to the stables after supper, Sam. Our horses are exquisite. Award-winning, record-breaking, every last one of them,” he gushed without missing a beat, much to his guest’s confusion.

 _Stables_. He could hardly imagine a married couple of his own age having their own stables, filled with award-winning horses, yet it could hardly surprise him, knowing Castiel’s family as well as he did. “I’d like that,” he decided.

“Oh! Weren’t you going to visit the baby before his bedtime?” Kelly’s voice was tender at the mention of her son. “Are we still going to lunch tomorrow, Sammy?”

“He has to work tomorrow, don’t you?” Castiel questioned, though his eyes stayed glued on her instead of him.

Sam’s eyebrows furrowed when the couple talked at each other, scheduling his own day on his behalf while he sat not even two feet away. Not bothering to ask about his schedule, they spoke excitedly over each other, only stopping when the metallic shrieking of the telephone interrupted again.

They forgot the horses when the fifth guest reminded the table of his presence. Nobody dared speak. Even after the butler answered the phone to end the call, silence loomed over the group—and not for a lack of words between them. The silence spoke novels that Sam didn’t care to know. The butlers, apparently, were familiar with this and heard his silent cry for help, because they came over to clear the dishes away. Gabriel and Kelly wandered away first, and Castiel made his way around a path of gray stone towards the front of the house, leaving Sam to chase after him if he wanted to keep up.

Twilight turned the sky before them into a Van Gogh painting, spreading shades of purple across the sky while the horizon glowed with pinks and golds unlike anything else Sam had seen.

“Your son…” He broke the silence of their walk with a sedative topic. “What does he do? In his free time; I mean, he surely has plenty to spare.”

“Jack?” His eyes lit up the way only a proud fathers’ could. “He walks and he talks. Did I tell you he rides horses? They’re the small ones, of course, but that boy… he’ll be a star rider one day. You hold me to that promise, won’t you?”

An empty nod braced Sam’s head. “I do recall one of you mentioning miniature horses. So he’s good? Talented at riding?” More talented than  _he_ would be if he ever took the reins.

“Very good,” Castiel confirmed, but his mind was somewhere else.

Knowing not to push his luck, Sam continued walking without a word. Up a spiral set of stairs, through winding halls, past doors that creaked and groaned with the men’s heavy footsteps. Finally, they reached a pale cream door at the end of one corridor, which a butler opened to reveal a room that clearly belonged to a child.

Buckets full of toys sat forgotten against one wall and an adult-sized bed sat on the adjacent wall. Green pillows adorned the bed and tucked underneath three different blankets, Sam spotted a young boy with a full head of blonde hair and eyes as blue as his father’s. “You must be Jack,” he said while bending to his knees near the bed, offering the child a smile.

Jack, however, didn’t care for the stranger in his bedroom. Ignoring him entirely, he kicked the heavy blankets off of his small body before running—or waddling—to his father. “Daddy, up!” Throwing his arms above his head to emulate being lifted, he stared at him with a defiant little grin. With a smirk like that, the kid must be a handful. Still, Castiel reached down to lift his son in the air, tossing him just inches above his hands to make him scream with delight. “I’m flying!”

Still on his knees by the bed, Sam watched the whole ordeal with a smile twitching the corners of his lips upward, though he couldn’t help feeling snubbed by the toddler.

“Jack, this is Mommy and Daddy’s old friend, Sam.” Much to the child’s dismay, his feet touched the floor a moment later - but not before his dad pressed his lips to the top of his head.  
  
“Old? How old?” Jack asked eagerly, unable to keep himself from bouncing up and down. “Is he one-hundred?”  
  
How could anybody have such boundless energy at ten in the evening? Sam shook his head.  
  
Bending down to his knees, radiating warmth in the child’s presence, Castiel allowed himself to laugh underneath his breath. “Not quite, sweetheart. Mom has known Sam since we were eighteen - can you believe that? - and Dad has known him even longer.”  
  
Two wide blue eyes opened even further in shock. “How?!”  
  
“Well, Sam is Daddy’s cousin. That means my grandpapa is his grandpapa!”  
  
Jack gasped like this was the most revolutionary discovery ever made. However, he continued to cling to his father, unwilling to say hello to the newly introduced man who sat with a smile on his face. “I would stay and read you a story, Jack, but it’s rather late and you’ve not even said hi yet…” Sam tested the waters with his offer and was quite shocked when two tiny arms flung around his neck, stopping him from breathing until the grip loosened half a second later. “Right, all right then. What’s your favorite bedtime story?”  
  
As the toddler scrambled off in search of his favorite book, Sam looked at his grinning cousin with a matching smile spread across his face.  
  
When story time ended and Castiel tucked Jack into bed, Sam said his farewells to the other occupants of the house so he could head back to West Egg and crawl into the comfort of his own bed. Night had turned the sky from purple to black in the two hours that passed between dinner and Sam’s arrival home, and the lights were off in all of his neighbor’s homes. Except one.  
  
Down the hilled backyard of his home, just to the side of his neighbor’s, there was a dock. Fifty feet away, sixty feet away, then seventy feet away, the neighbor strode down to the end of the dock. This shadow walked with a purpose, towards the mysteries of the sea, until he stilled at what must have been the last plank on his dock. The smooth yet deliberate movements of this man’s limbs suggested that this could, perhaps, be Mr. Veila himself, come out to admire what piece of their shared heaven called to him most.  
  
Sam wanted to call to him. He almost did, until Mr. Veila gave a sudden implication he was content to be alone. One of his arms stretched, further and further towards something that didn’t seem to exist, reaching over the sea. As if trying to grab a piece of his past, something missing from inside him, his fingers trembled as they curled in, and Sam turned his attention seaward. He could see nothing but a distant green light, spinning, and maybe it was the end of a dock. There was no implication of significance in this light, yet it drew his neighbor from his home late at night.  
  
When Sam looked again to the dock, Veila had disappeared, and he was alone again in the unquiet darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

Life came to a shock-inducing halt following Sam’s visit with his extended family. For five days, his entire schedule composed of waking up, going to work, reading his stock market informational books, and falling back asleep. Not once did his cousin or his wife reach out to him, not even to schedule that promised lunch the next day. Then, that Saturday morning, some much-needed excitement came knocking on his door. Two perfectly tailored butlers in robin blue uniforms presented a sheet of cream cardstock to the young man, who took it with much hesitation.  
  
Upon further investigation, he realized it was a handwritten invitation. Mr. Veila hoped he would come to one of his “little parties” that weekend—in fact, it would be his honor to host Mr. Winchester at a party—which would run until Sunday at dusk. No other information came on the card. On the bottom, in ink that still shined with wetness in the sun, was a signature that curved and twisted elegantly, though he couldn’t even make out the first name.  
  
Just before seven that evening, Sam dressed in white flannels, overlaid by a tweed black coat and left for the party across the lawn. Crowds of well-dressed men and women gathered near the grand entryway of the palace. As he wandered further into the home, through long and wide corridors that never ended, the crowds grew louder and larger.  
  
“Excuse me, ma’am?” He had called to a woman in a white dress. “Do you - do you know where I can find the host?”  
  
She laughed in his face. “Host! What host?”  
  
Moving on. A small congregation of official looking, middle-aged businessmen stood near the wall of this hallway, and they looked promising. “Hello!” Sam shouted over the music. “Do you know where I can find the host? Mr. Veila?”  
  
The short one led the pack in laughing, and they left without a word.  
  
How peculiar.  
  
By the time the men left his vicinity, he had made it to the end of the hall which opened out to the most grandiose of rooms. Sam had no trouble locating the cocktail table—outside the house, past the gardens that stood silent in the absence of people—after yet another party-goer denied knowing the whereabouts of the host, and he slumped down into a seat with an electric blue beverage in his hand.

Before taking even one sip of this strange cocktail, Sam decided he would get roaring drunk. With the glass pressed to his lips and the initial burn rushing down his throat, into his chest, he saw a familiar figure exiting the house. It was none other than Gabriel Shurley.

Not wanting to appear foolish if anybody were to look him by, he called out. “Hello!” In the presence of nobody but them, his voice seemed unnaturally loud. Still, he approached the man with a crooked grin showing his pearly white teeth.

“Thought I might find you here—” Gabriel leaned down to whisper something in the ears of two women at his side who skipped back up the stairs only a moment later. “—alone.”

Sam didn’t know if he should feel offended or not. “Why is that?”

“You’re his neighbor, are you not? And you claimed not to know a soul in West Egg, so you _surely_ don’t know anybody else at this party.”

_Yes_ , he should have felt offended, yet his points were valid, and he was right to assume Sam would be alone. “Do you know anyone?”

As soon as the question left his mouth, he knew it was stupid. Gabriel was a _socialite_ by definition, which meant that he probably knew more people here than Veila himself. Unfortunately, Mr. Shurley didn’t mind teasing his new acquaintance over the ridiculous comment before answering him directly.

The pair made their way up the marble stairway into the house, and the volume multiplied tenfold. They had to shout to hear one another. “Well, what about Veila? Do you know him?”

“I heard he killed a man once!” cried out a stranger’s voice, and her friend scoffed.

“Don’t be wry, darling!” The brunette exclaimed, grabbing a glass of champagne from the tray passing by. “ _I_ heard that he was a German spy during the war.”

Mr. Veila’s occupation—or his mere existence—proved to be a more popular topic than Sam ever imagined. Left and right, up and down, passers-by were narrating their own stories on who this mysterious man could be. One of the more bizarre accusations claimed he was the nephew of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which surely couldn’t be true.

A few people declared that Veila never existed in the first place, one of which went a step further to claim that the parties were an elaborate government scheme so they could spy on the general public and catch bootleggers. By the time Gabriel and Sam climbed to the top of the double spiral staircase towards the balcony level, the accusations and allegations about their host faded away, and Sam felt more relieved than he expected.

Placing his empty glass on a matching empty tray as a butler passed by swiftly, he turned to face the man he clung to this evening like an old friend, both of his eyebrows arched. “You never answered my question,” he accused. 

His face contorted, and Gabriel spent a quarter of a minute trying to remember the question he’d been asked. Then, his face lit up with mischief. “If you’re so desperate to know, why don’t we go meet him?” 

“Do you know where?”

“Of course not! Where is the fun in that?”

Without another word, Gabriel grabbed him by the hand and rushed with him to the other side of the balcony. From there, they could see the entire world and the entire world could see them. Trying not to get distracted by the shining of the light when it hit the chandeliers, Sam turned his eyes downward to examine the bar. It was crowded, but Veila wasn’t there. They could see the garden through the slimmest of cracks where three separate architectural structures did not meet in the distance, but Gabriel decided he wasn’t there either.  
  
When he couldn’t find the host on either spiral stairway or on the dance floor or near the pool, their attention turned towards the upper level they found themselves on. Two mahogany doors the size of Sam’s cottage beckoned the duo closer, and they stumbled inside hand-in-hand.  
  
“Mr. Veila…” Gabriel hummed through the dark of the room, dancing swiftly across the rugs. “You’ve been looking high and low for him, asking all around. But the truth is…” By pure chance, his hand found its grip on the chain of a lamp that he tugged to illuminate his entire face. “I’m Mr. Veila!”  
  
Sam's laugh filled his belly and caused his head to shoot back with joy. The force made him stumble and wobble like a baby giraffe testing out its brand new legs, and he barely saved himself from collapsing onto the oak floors by re-grounding himself.  
  
Across the table, Gabriel’s laughter took an extra spare second to fill the room, but before they knew it, both of their booming laughs echoed through the room, which had dusty old books from wall to wall and floor to ceiling. It must have been a library, easily three stories high, with mobile ladders on each wall. In the only spare spaces between shelves, there were oil paintings of massive proportion to fill the gaps. Not an inch of this room went untouched by whoever designed it, yet they found no evidence that another soul had touched this room in ages.  
  
“Well, Mr. Veila…” Sam dragged his fingers along a round table then blew the dust off his fingertips. His eyes flickered with something resembling mischief as he rolled with the joke. “You’re far more familiar than I imagined. Why — how do you do it? How did you get from the Kline residence to the dock as quickly as myself?”  
  
Sliding across the hard floors, turning on each lamp he came by, Gabriel laughed. “Why should I tell you? Some secrets are best kept that way.”  
  
Just as Sam opened his mouth to respond with whatever clever remark came to mind, an announcement came from just outside the doors, so they crept towards the door and peeked through the crack. There was a stage on the pool, round and full of women in colorful outfits, and a man with a loud voice shouted to announce the next show. They would soon dance, he told them, to a Charleston with the live band. No, wait, Sam shook his head. It’s an orchestra, not a band.  
  
The moon had risen to its rightful place high in the sky amongst stars that whispered their stories to the world. She beamed her rays down as if it would make an impact, considering the artificial light leaving the mansion. “We should keep looking,” Sam finally declared as he looked over his shoulder to his friend, who stopped pretending to be Mr. Veila.  
  
Captured by the moon’s glow like a siren in the night, Gabriel showed no signs of hearing the comment. Not until a full minute later when he cried out, “Well, let’s go!” then led his friend out of the library, leaving it lonely and abandoned once more.  
  
It didn’t take long for Gabriel to disappear in the crowd just outside the door, and Sam pushed through the people until he found him perched on the top step of one spiral staircase. Butlers with trays of hor d'oeuvres and champagne and cocktails accelerated through expertly,  winding from one end of the maze to the next without batting an eyelash. Sam reached over a young woman’s head to grab a glass of champagne from the nearest tray to him, only for someone to hand the glass to him instead for the first time that evening.  
  
With a barely audible utterance of thanks, he caught a glimpse of the green eyes of the man holding the tray. “You seem familiar,” the unfamiliar man proclaimed with a definitive nod of his head. “You were in the Third Division during the war, weren’t you?”  
  
“Why, yes!” Sam’s surprise was clear on his face as he stepped to one side, away from the crowds, looking at this man in the face. It seemed familiar, the way his jaw came to a sharp end and his hair stood up straight, but he couldn’t pinpoint a name to save his life. “I was in the Ninth Machine-Gun Battalion. Not for long, but long enough.”  
  
The man’s lips curled up, and with it, the corners of his eyes and his sparkling teeth went on full display. He wanted to get a closer look, to examine the freckles on his face further, but the smile… It left Sam frozen in his place, unable to speak for a moment. He knew those dimples, and he recognized the way this man carried himself, even with a tray of drinks in his hand - which surely didn’t belong there.  
  
“I was in the Seventh Infantry. Spent most of my time in France, until I went home in June of nineteen-eighteen,” the still-nameless man informed his new acquaintance, passing the silver drink tray to a butler who passed by and thanked him.  
  
What a small world. “Really! I also spent much of my time serving in France, and the villages were nice. Nice compared to the horrors I’ve heard others endured, that is.”  
  
There it was again, that contagious smile that understood him only as deeply as he longed to be understood. In the first instant, the smile projected to the entire party - of the world - until it focused only on him, promising nothing could ever be as important as that moment. It offered reassurance, understanding, but it was so much more than that. This smile bore deep into Sam’s soul, bringing out the most vulnerable parts of him in the instant it flashed over this man’s face.  
  
This time, however, the smile lasted but a moment before remorse crept into the expression, and his green eyes softened to show an unfamiliar sadness. “We had it good in the war, didn’t we?” The man in the suit remarked, but it wasn’t meant to be a question, so Sam stayed silent. “I’ve got a hydroplane I’ll be testing out tomorrow morning. Why don’t you come with me, old sport? We can go to lunch afterward.”  
  
The abrupt change of topic felt like a bucket of iced water thrown onto him, though he had to admit that it relieved him to leave the topic of the Great War behind. “Do you live nearby?” He questioned. People came to these parties from all over New York, he gathered, so he didn’t want to lug himself hours out of the way for a hydroplane.  
  
“We’ll go just along the Sound, right on the shore. There’s a beach there, warm and sunny in this part of the summer, and I’m certain you’ll enjoy it.”  
  
“Okay,” Sam agreed, then inquired about a time.  
  
Just as the green-eyed man prepared to answer, Gabriel’s hand came to rest on his friend’s shoulder. “Enjoying yourself now, Sam?”  
  
“Yes, much better,” Sam answered Gabriel absently before returning to his new acquaintance. “How often are you here? This is my first party — quite unusual for me. And I received an invitation! It seems I’m the only one, but two of Veila’s chauffeurs came to my house—” He waved out to the hidden home in the distance. “—and delivered it by hand. But, what’s more peculiar, is that I still haven’t seen this host.”  
  
Befuddlement froze upon the other man’s face. Did Sam misread the invitation?  
  
“I’m Veila,” he said suddenly. “Dean Veila.”  
  
Sam’s eyes widened and his jaw fell agape rudely. An elbow in the side—presumably from Gabriel—knocked him back into the moment and he shut his mouth, outstretching a hand to shake. “I beg your pardon, I had no idea!” He insisted during the firm but brief handshake.

“I thought you knew, old sport. It seems I’m not as good of a host as I believed!” The short laugh escaping his lips nearly seemed forced, but the way his hand clapped Sam on the shoulder felt natural and the judgmental thoughts slipped from his brain.

Just as abruptly as their conversation began, it ended. The butler from before hurried over to whisper something about Chicago waiting for Mr. Veila over the telephone, and he excused himself with a curt nod.

“Who is he?” Sam demanded, stepping down one stair to position himself beside Gabriel.

“Who is he?” Gabriel repeated as if the sentence made no sense. Then, he shook his head and started down the staircase towards the bar. “He’s just a man named Veila. A man with a lot of money and even more secrets.”

From the table of hors d'oeuvres near the bar, rolling his eyes, Sam grabbed two small sandwiches to pop into his mouth one at a time. “Where is he from? What does he do?”

Gabriel grabbed a drink from the bar—this one shockingly pink in color—and downed a sip, taking his time to speak again. “Now you sound like the rest. Why don’t you ask him yourself? He’s _your_ neighbor.”

Frustration was evident in the taller man’s next sigh, who barely swallowed his second sandwich. “Do you even know anything about him?” He asked, his tone accusatory more than curious.

“Fine!” He gave in with a heave that was far too dramatic for the circumstances. “He told me once that he went to Oxford. I don’t believe him, but he said what he said.”

“Why don’t you believe him?”

“Why would I believe him? Something about him feels… _off._ I don’t know what it is, but I don’t trust him,” Gabriel admitted with a short laugh and a sip of his drink, as if what he said was amusing to himself.

“How do you mean?” Sam’s dark eyes darted from one side of the room to the other. “Seemed just fine to me.”

With a shake of his head, as if he was certain he knew something his friend did not, Gabriel stepped closer to him. “You know what they’re saying about them. What honest man has so many rumors about his integrity flying around? And — it’s the _way_ he speaks. You’d think he took years of acting classes and didn’t learn a thing!”

Mr. Veila didn’t seem _that_ bad, at least not to Sam.

Although just moments before, Gabriel had accused Sam of acting like the childish gossip hounds they had heard before, now _his_ tone was the one inciting rumors and accusations. His voice was just as enthralling as the girl who claimed, “I heard he killed a man!” and it sparked the same curiosity within Sam.

When the drink in Gabriel’s hand was empty and Sam ran out of finger-sized sandwiches to snack on, he was still without answers. However, if that conversation taught him anything, it was that he wouldn’t receive answers—maybe not even from Veila himself.

A beat of silence passed between the two, awkward despite the hundreds of people bustling and laughing and singing drunkenly around them. Rather than reach for another drink, Gabriel broke the silence: “Let’s dance. The orchestra is slowing down, and I see a spot just… it’s right there” He waved to the distant spot where the pair could squeeze, if they only stood close enough.

“Us?” Sam asked, surprised by the suggestion.

“Well, why not?”

The answer seemed obvious to Sam, and surely the thought passed through his short friend’s mind, but he didn’t seem to care. Maybe people at this party, at parties like this, were different. Deciding it couldn’t hurt his non-existent reputation to dance with him for one song, Sam allowed himself to get dragged through hoards of people by the hand until they reached the empty spot on the dance floor.

Sam was right when he assumed they would have to squeeze together if they wanted to fit in the spot that was perhaps two tiles large, if that. While a few people made room for the pair, most didn’t bother looking away from their own partners, and he didn’t know if he should feel relieved or not.

Still lost in his own mind, Sam felt a soft hand nudge against his own, pulling him in close so their chests nearly touched. “Are you going to pretend I’m not here?” came the low whisper in his ear. He could feel the other man’s hot breath down his neck, his heart beating in his chest, while Sam’s cheeks flushed a bright red color, a familiar but unwelcome feeling stirred within him, and _god! Oh, god,_  this was improper to do in public, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

With his lips pressed together and his gaze cast downward at the man grasping his shoulder and his hand, as if hiding his eyes and not speaking a word would protect him from improper behavior, Sam led Gabriel in short circles in the tight space available to them on the dance floor.  
  
Seemingly oblivious to the hoards of people surrounding them, Gabriel rolled up to his tiptoes while leaning closer to the heat radiating off of his friend’s large body — muscular yet tense — and he fluttered his hazel eyes closed. His parted lips found themselves barely an inch away from the pulsating skin of the place where Sam’s neck met his jaw.  
  
A shiver ran down Sam’s spine. Never had he been so close with a man — at least, not in public — and never had he been so openly intimate with a man. Or with anyone, for that matter. It was thrilling, intoxicating, and he couldn’t get enough. He wanted more than to just move swiftly through a space of four square feet with Gabriel, though he couldn’t complain about their closeness.

“What do you say…” Gabriel’s voice came as a purr that vibrated against his skin and through his body. “we have lunch sometime. A small place, nothing too spectacular… or perhaps within the privacy of our own homes?”

He couldn’t say no. Even if he wanted to, the heat of his body pressed against his own combined with the buttery smooth voice against his body wouldn’t allow him to say no. The words didn’t want to form, though, so he stood still in his place for a few beats of the drum playing in the background.

“ _Yes_ ,” Sam said finally said, desperation and eagerness playing in his green eyes.

Clearly pleased with himself, and much to the other man’s disappointment, Gabriel promptly removed his body from Sam’s own and strode off toward the bar once again, mid-song. Sam, left hot and bothered and speechless and alone on the dance floor, stumbled over his feet to chase after him like a baby deer, mumbling pointless apologies underneath his shaky breath.

A few sets of prying eyes followed the overly tall man on his path from the center of the floor past the swimming pool, the fountain, and near the gardens where the bar was located. Curiosity seemed to fill the attendees of Veila’s parties — each and every one of them — and they all seemed to want a taste of a life more interesting than their own. Apparently, the budding romance (if he dared call it so) between Sam and Gabriel satiated that hunger for the eager spectators.

By the time he made it through the crowds to the bar where his counterpart sat with a fresh glass of a bubbly beverage, he had a glass of his own in his hands, though he didn’t quite know _what_ he was drinking. It tasted fruity, he noted, but his focus stayed on Gabriel. The drink was only there to keep his hands busy.

“What are you doing?” Sam demanded through the burning of the drink down his throat.

Maintaining an air of innocence, he smiled in response and tilted his head back to sip his drink. His hair fell back from his face with the motion, revealing his playful green eyes, deep and enamouring, that he had to fight not to get lost in. “I don’t know what you mean,” Gabriel claimed.

“I don’t believe that for even a second.” He stared pointedly at him. “You know exactly what you are doing.”

The hand not holding his champagne glass raised in the air with his shoulder to emulate half of a shrug, while a smirk twitched the corners of his lips upward. “What, exactly, am I doing to you, then? Please, be specific. I wouldn’t want to miss a single detail.”

His voice was taunting and soft, drawing Sam closer so he could hear him properly. But when he drew closer, he could hear the way Gabriel’s breath hitched in his throat, see the way his eyes fluttered at the sight, _feel_ the way his hot breath brushed down on his bare neck, exposed and open. It was a ploy to get him closer, and he knew that from the beginning, but he couldn’t help himself.

Sinking his teeth into his bottom lip to maintain his proper composure — and to prevent himself from grazing his teeth against the exposed skin of Gabriel’s neck just inches away — Sam inhaled as slowly as possible, breath shaking and jaw quivering at the sheer effort it took. “This evening, you’ve gone out of your way, Gabriel, to—”  
  
“Mr. Shurley?” The vaguely familiar voice of a butler calling to the man in question cut Sam off mid-sentence, much to his frustration. They would finish the discussion later. “Mr. Veila would like to speak with you. Alone.”  
  
A confused expression danced across Gabriel's face but he nodded once. Passing his half-empty champagne glass off to another butler wandering around the area, he leaned in close to Sam and, with his lips grazing against his ear, whispered, "Wait for me." This left the messy-haired man more flustered, bewildered, and red in the face than before — something he would not have thought possible, mere minutes ago.  
  
The butler led Gabriel up a winding staircase in what appeared to be an entryway in Mr. Veila's house, far different from the stairs to the library, through large corridors that echoed their footsteps even through the bolstering sound of music coming from the party. It felt like an eternity before they finally reached Mr. Veila's office. When they did, the butler opened one door for Gabriel who entered with a perplexed look on the soft features of his face.

"Mr. Shurley, please. Take a seat," the man with piercing green eyes said smoothly, moving away from the large window that overlooked the party happening in his own backyard.

Gabriel complied. "Have you asked me here to finally confess your love, Mr. Veila?" One of his thick eyebrows quirked while a smirk played on his lips.

The man ignored the comment and opted instead to lean against the large desk in the office casually, one leg crossed over the other. "Call me Dean. Please."

"Then Gabriel is all right for me."

"Very well." An awkward silence lingered in the air before Dean found the nerve to speak up once more. "I've asked you here to ask you a question. Pardon me if I sound too forward, but do you know of a Castiel Kline?"

"Know him?" Gabriel's hazel eyes narrowed. "I spent much of my life with him. As a friend, of course."

A nod braced Dean's head. "Are you still in contact? I would like to set up a meeting with him, perhaps for tea."

Gabriel let his eyes dart around the room as if the walls would hold the answers to his curiosity but sighed as his gaze finally landed on the host of the party. "We're close, indeed. My new friend out there—Samuel Winchester—is a cousin of his, so perhaps you might start there..."  
  
The name brightened the solemn features across Dean’s face. “Does he? Mr. Winchester is my neighbor, you see. If he knows Castiel…” Although his sentence ended there, the furrowing of his brows showed that the thoughts in his mind did not stop, but the guest would not consider pestering his host on about such prudent things.  
  
“I met Mr. Winchester at dinner just last week, at Mr. and Mrs. Kline’s home in East Egg. Kelly spoke with him like an old friend, and Castiel was quite close with him. I can promise all the liquor in my home that Samuel and Castiel are well acquainted.”  
  
Their conversation continued for another hour that evening, leaving Sam alone to drink or become acquainted with the home - and, of course, he drank. Not too much. He wasn’t drunk by the end of the night, but the buzz running through his veins had him laughing at the smallest of whispers from the people surrounding him.  
  
The party goers came and went like the sun on a cloudy day, and his curious gaze followed many of them around, until he saw the clock read 11:00 P.M. and he needed to return home. With the floods of other people leaving Veila’s home, he made his way out the same doors he entered that spit him out into the circle driveway around a fountain three times the size of a horse.  
  
What could be taking Gabriel so long with their host? They must have had more of a history than he let on with his taunting whispers and jabs about how he was secretly the mysterious Mr. Veila. Nobody spoke alone with a stranger for such a long time.  
  
The crowds died out as Sam watched with care. Just outside the general vicinity of the building, a green Bugatti had rolled off the road and into a ditch. This hardly could surprise anybody around them. Everybody seemed intoxicated that night, and everybody seemed to drive home. It couldn’t have been a pretty mix. Sam, preferring to observe from afar, chose not to get involved in the accident with a walking woman and her stumbling husband or lover. He couldn’t make out any of the words being said from his distance, but her despondence and sorrow transformed into pure, unadulterated anger in the blink of an eye.  
  
Sam had to force his intent gaze away from the strangers arguing over the car—the absolutely ruined car—in the ditch. The stars over their heads called him home, so he straightened his tie and took one step down the stairs. Suddenly, he heard a familiar voice calling out just behind him: “Your secret is safe with me!”  
  
It was Gabriel. A flick of his head over his shoulders revealed to Sam that he was speaking to Mr. Veila, who followed him outside, and they seemed to bid one another adieu. Mr. Veila waved one last time, calling out a friendly, “Good-night, old sport,” before Sam’s friend found him.  
  
“You waited,” Gabriel observed. While he tried to stay nonchalant and uncaring, something about him made it appear he really did care. This warmed his heart.  
  
“Actually…” Looking over his shoulder, Sam saw the darkness of his house—lit up only by one light post—through the forested shadows. “I was just preparing to leave. You were inside for quite a while.”  
  
In an attempt to discern where his friend’s gaze was located, since his attention seemed awfully focused, Gabriel moved closer with his eyebrows furrowed. One of his hands moved to rest on his shoulder gently, then he caught sight of the small cottage sitting in the distance. It was cute, with its red door and white patio swing, and it looked like a place that one could consider home—much unlike the palace they were just leaving.

Shaking the thoughts out of his distracted head, he smiled. “Then I’m glad I caught you before you left. It would be a real shame to leave without a good-bye.” 

The comment took Sam by surprise. “From me?”

Hazel eyes flickered around the area in an overly dramatic manner to stress his point. “I wasn’t looking at anybody else.”

“Oh — well… good-night, then, Mr. Shurley.”

“Gabe, please. Mr. Shurley sounds far too formal.”

“Good-night, Gabe.”

_Much better_. Gabe smiled to himself. “Ring me tomorrow morning, won’t you? First number in the telephone book under ‘Shurley’ and it’ll ring straight to my father’s line. I’ll be waiting!” Without allowing Sam any time to respond, he spun on his heels to rejoin the entourage with whom he entered the party, jumping into the middle seat in a five-seater convertible car.

Left alone once more with his thoughts and a hundred strangers, Sam watched the car zoom past the dozens of other cars that were leaving, pressing his dry lips together in thought. “Mr. Veila!” He called out suddenly.

The host spun around to look at the voice calling to him and allowed a warm smile to take over his face. A _kind_ smile. “Mr. Winchester, old sport. Did you enjoy yourself?” Veila asked in a loud yet somehow gentle voice, smooth enough to make even the most worrisome person feel at home in his presence.

“I did! It was wonderful. Thank you for inviting me.” Sam made his way back up a couple of stairs so he stood on the balcony beside his host, grinning from ear to ear.

“I told you it would be my pleasure. And please…” Mr. Veila looked to his neighbor with curiosity in his eyes that glittered under the light of the full moon. “Come back for another. Every weekend, the doors are open, and you are more than welcome to join me. In fact - you can visit without a party, just tell my staff who you are.”

The thought of another party intimidated him. This one had felt so lonely, especially once Gabriel left his side to speak with their host, and he didn’t know if he would join the entire state for another party at Veila’s. Maybe once he made more friends and didn’t feel quite so alone…

“We will see, Mr. Veila.” At this, the man’s expression fell, so Sam changed the topic. “Are you still interested in testing your hydroplane tomorrow morning?”

His face lit up like Coney Island at night, and he clapped him on the shoulder. “Most certainly! I’ll be at your place at nine o’clock sharp, and I will drive you on down to the hydroplane and then to lunch.”

“Then I’ll see you in the morning, won’t I?” Sam started down the steps as the final people filed out of the house and into cars with drivers and chauffeurs awaiting them. “Good-night.”

Veila’s eyes crinkled at the corners and the ends of his lips turned up into an expression of soft content as he watched his acquaintance walk away. “Good-night, old sport,” he called in a tender voice, full of care and compassion, lifting one hand to wave to him as he walked away.


	3. Chapter 3

On Sunday morning, as church bells rang and congregations sang, the roaring of a car engine that sounded dangerously close to his house drew Sam out of the front door in only a robe. A mug of piping hot tea in his hand, he saw a bright yellow car coming to a squealing stop just feet away from his front door, flattening and marking up the overgrown yellow-green grass that already struggled to thrive.

The car door opened and closed in a moment’s time as the driver revealed himself to be Mr. Veila, and _of course_ it was the wealthy neighbor racing the speedy car against no one but a stationary home. His eyes darted around uneasily, taking in the sight of the home that could surely barely even fit the one man living inside, and he positioned himself against the hood of his car with his arms crossed over his chest.

“Dean,” Sam yawned. “I thought—ahh—thought you were going to be here at nine o’clock?”

“Good morning, old sport! The clock will strike any minute now, and we’re riding up together, so it couldn’t hurt to be early.” Even though he was clearly speaking directly to the man before him, he was distracted. Not obviously, no, but he couldn’t stand still. Leaning against his car to prevent his body from expending energy unnecessarily, in a way that is so peculiarly American, he moved parts of his body constantly. Some part of him was always tapping or twitching against something, such as his leg or his car. The palm of his hand opened and closed without reason, resting close to his hip on the dashboard of the car, and his eyes wandered the quaint outdoors area still.

He saw Sam looking at his car with admiration and began to beam with pride. “Beautiful, isn’t she, old sport?” Jumping off the car, Dean stepped to one side to offer a better view to the apparently curious fellow across from him. “Haven’t you seen it before?”

Of course he had seen it. Everybody who had been to West Egg got to see the vibrant car on display every time they passed Mr. Veila’s house, and his own neighbor was no exception. It was a short car of monstrous length, decorated with more mirrors than any car should need, causing it to glow brighter than the sun if looked into. The top was open and there didn’t appear to be a removable hood. Sam wondered what Dean did during the winter or on rainy days. What appeared to be a spare tire sat just behind the front right tire, hooked on with a black leather strap and what he could only assume were hooks that held it in place, lest the metal-wrapped tire fly off from a moving car.

Suddenly, Sam remembered someone had asked him a question. “Not this close, I haven’t,” he answered dumbly, offering the man a crooked half-smile.

With one more proud look at his yellow car, Dean cleared his throat and turned his attention fully to his friend. “Go on inside, old sport. Can’t go out looking like that,” he instructed.

A short nod bracing his head, Sam turned around and went back inside his small home while Dean waited outside with his bright car.

— —

Sam had never been on a hydroplane before. In fact, he didn’t even know what a hydroplane was before his neighbor took him that afternoon, and it was exactly what it sounded like: a plane—like an airplane—that barely hovered over the top of a body of water. Part of him had a hard time believing Veila knew properly how to drive and control the boat-like vehicle, but they didn’t crash and nobody got injured, so it was either easy enough to figure out or Dean knew for some other unknown reason.

After coasting the shore of the Sound for about two hours, the men piled back into the yellow car and Dean sped towards their lunch destination at an alarming rate.

“I want to tell you something, old sport!” The driver had to raise his voice to be heard over the booming radio music blaring from the car beside them. “It’s about my life, all right? I swear it is God’s truth.”

“What is it?” Sam responded just as loudly, leaning closer so perhaps they wouldn’t need to speak so loud.

“I come from money, all right? Lots of it, very old money, too. My family ran a business in the Middle West before they died several years ago. Upon their deaths, I even inherited a load of money. Spent years upon years traveling and lived in all the lavish capitals of Europe. I spent time in Rome, Paris, Venice.” He spoke excitedly, thrilled to tell such stories about himself. “I’ll tell you something else if you want, old sport.”

This didn’t seem like a question, and Sam was pretty sure he didn’t have a choice as to whether or not he heard what the man had to say next. Sure enough, he continued to speak before Sam even opened his mouth to respond.

Loudly, despite having passed the car with the blaring music, Veila continued on with his story. “I was raised right here in America and educated at Oxford. Beautiful place, if you haven’t seen it yourself. Anyway, it was a family tradition. My ancestors and their ancestors before them were all educated at Oxford, and my children will one day be educated there, as well.” The silence following his words came abruptly, and Sam wondered if he had finished yet. No wonder Gabriel thought he was lying about going to Oxford — with the way he spoke, he was clearly a story teller, bringing his listeners on the ride up and down the story of his life, only showcasing the best parts.

When another moment passed, and it seemed the story came to its end, he took a glance over at the man driving the car and casually asked, “What part of the Middle-West?”

“San Francisco!”

The comment took Sam by surprise, and he blinked a couple times slowly as if it would help him figure out in what world California was part of the Middle-West. “I see,” he finally responded with a slow nod of his head.

“Look here. When I was in the lavish homes in Europe’s most wonderful capitals, my mantles were lined with the jewels I collected — mainly rubies — and I spent much of my time writing, reading, hunting, dining with diplomats and royals, painting things for nobody but myself to see, and trying as hard as I could to forget something very sad that happened to me long ago.”

Sam could barely hide his incredulous manner, and — with much difficulty — he managed to contain a dubious laugh. The storytellers words were filled with such self-importance and a determination to convince his friend of these statements that he couldn’t bring himself to believe a word that he said.

“The war came and took me from my comfortable lifestyle. They stationed me all over, but mostly in France, and had a very—a very hard time keeping my head above the water. I tried very hard to die, old sport. The ringing of the bombs and the gunshots and the screams of the soldiers—my soldiers—was nearly too much to bear. Right after a promotion to major, every allied government gave me a decoration. Then I lost a friend back in Montenegro, little Montenegro down by the Adriatic Sea, and it…. I was very lucky, old sport. The people of the country were warm-hearted and kind. No matter how much I tried to die, they wouldn't let me. It was like the country protected my life, like they knew I was off to do great things.”

At this point, Sam’s incredulity had melted away, replaced by a looming fascination as the story drew him in closer.

After clearing his throat, Dean reached into one of his pockets to dig something out: a little medallion slung on a ribbon that fell into the passenger’s hand. “That’s the one from Montenegro. I always carry it.”

Sam examined the round piece of metal thoroughly and was surprised to find it appeared authentic. Orderi di Danilo, read the words around the edge, Montenegro, Nicolas Rex.

“Flip it over,” Dean instructed, so he did and focused his attention on the small words engraved on the surface. “Major Dean Veila, for Valour Extraordinary. It’s true, I told you.”

So it was. Perhaps he merely had one of those voices that sounded inauthentic, for he viewed the world with such eager excitement, but he was truly an honest man. Handing the medallion back to its owner, a rectangular sheet came into his hands and he instantly recognized it to be an old photograph. There were probably half a dozen men in blazers crouched in front of a large, ancient-looking old building. Right in the middle was a man easily identifiable as Veila, with his chiseled jaw and cheekbones and the smile that understood him so well, even through the moment frozen in time on a piece of paper. He looked a little younger, but not by much.

“Here’s one more thing. From my Oxford days, we’re sitting at the Trinity Quad. The man on my left—” He peered over then pointed at a tall and slender looking man beside him. “That man is now the Earl of Doncaster.”

Then it was all true. The stories of the inheritance, the war, the traveling, all of it. In the blink of an eye, he saw him hunting tigers in the woods of Bali. He saw him opening a chest full of rubies and emeralds and putting them on display like they would stop the gnawing of his broken heart.

“How do you think of me, anyway, old sport?” Dean asked while he tucked the photograph back into his jacket’s pocket, turning his head to look at him.

Knowing he had to choose his words cautiously, Sam flicked his tongue across his lips in thought and tapped his fingers along his knee. “I think you’re a man who has lived a very colorful life, full of tragedy. A life worth living,” he answered carefully,

This seemed to be an appropriate answer, because he nodded contently and continued on with his train of thought. “I’m going to be asking a big favor of you today, old sport. I hope that’s all right.” He sped up the car as he spoke, raising his voice with the increased volume of the engine. “I wanted you to know me before I asked such a thing of you. Not many people know me, as I tend to drift and find myself amongst strangers, trying to forget the sad thing that’s happened to me. I don’t want you to think I’m some nobody. You will hear about it all this afternoon.”

“At lunch?” Sam looked at him with a curious raise of his eyebrows.

“No. You will be taking Mr. Shurley to tea after we have lunch.”

“I’m taking Gabriel to tea?”

“You two got along well, didn’t you?”

“Well — yes, I suppose we did.”

“Good. I got that impression from our discussion yesterday, and your interactions. Thought it would be good for you to spend time together.”

Somehow, this didn’t feel like a favor Dean was doing for Sam, as his words would have made it sound to anyone else. Sam didn’t want to go to tea to discuss Mr. Dean Veila, and he couldn’t fight the annoyance creeping up inside him. This man was selfish, and he wouldn't even tell him what this mystery favor would be. Surely it would be overly fantastic and extraordinary, and for a moment, he regretted ever stepping onto his perfectly kept lawn.

From then on out, the drive continued quietly. It wasn’t that Dean had run out of things to say, but he could read people and could tell that Sam had no interest in discussing these matters further. Or any matters. Passing by Port Roosevelt, many little boats with sails moving alongside monstrous ocean-bound ships disappeared off into the distance. They quickly neared the city—going far faster than Sam ever felt comfortable—and Sam only watched the cars and the saloons and the people speed by with his eyes half-open.

Driving into the Valley of Ashes — the industrial town that separated West Egg and East Egg from the city, filled with railroad workers that worked 12-hour shifts each day to get the job done in the beating of the hot summer sun and small business owners who only hoped to make an extra buck selling knick knacks or necessities — Sam caught sight of a gas station and barely read the sign before it sped away as fast as it came into view. Rooney’s Auto Shop the sign red, and he knew he’d heard that name recently…. Oh! Mr. Jefferson Rooney was the man with whom Kelly Kline was accused of having an affair. He must have been the man working the gas pump, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

Mere minutes after entering the desolate Valley of Ashes, they left at roaring speeds, and found themselves approaching the great bridge. The car had to slow due to increased traffic, though not by much, and the sun peeped through the holes and gliders of the bridge, making a constant flicker on the moving cars. The city rose from the horizon, buildings of monstrous size making themselves seen before anything else. The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge was always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.

Anything could happen now. Now that the city had approached them, anything could happen; even Veila could happen.

Through the final winding streets of the city, the driver seemed to spot his destination where he parked the car and strode inside without so much as a glance to the other man in his car. Momentarily, Sam had to wonder if he forgot him in the prolonged silence.

Much to Sam’s confusion, they made their way into the Forty-second Street barber shop, and someone greeted his friend with a clap on the back. The shorter man who greeted Dean had a receding hairline, but he combed the thinning black hair forward fruitlessly to cover this. His beard was full and bushy, complete with streaks of silver and grey standing out in contrast to the dark brown shade, and his deeply green colored eyes seemed ceaselessly amused.

“Hello, boys,” the man said in a heavy accent that told Sam he spent many of his younger years in either Britain or Scotland.

“Mr. Winchester, this is my friend and business partner, Mr. MacLeod,” Dean introduced with a polite nod of his head towards the alleged Mr. MacLeod then a smile to Sam.

Sam returned the smile to him before looking the new acquaintance up and down briefly. He had a plain suit on, though it fit far better than any of Sam’s own, complete with a black necktie in an intricate knot that he could never identify, nor would he be able to tie it himself. As his gaze fell further down on the man to the arms dangling at his side, he noticed his peculiar looking cufflinks When Mr. MacLeod’s hand moved to rest on Dean’s shoulder, Sam inspected his bizarre cufflinks and identified them as… human molars? Maybe they weren’t real.

Pushing the vomit in his throat back down as it threatened to come up, he straightened out the tweed jacket of his own suit and looked to the wealthy men in front of him.

“You’re wondering if they’re real, aren’t you?” Mr. Macleod asked, lifting his arms to display his wrists. “I can tell by the look on your face. That doesn’t come from just anything.”

 _Great. He noticed._ With a forced smile, trying with everything he had inside him to hide his disgust, he nodded briefly. “I am curious.”

“They are quite real, Mr. Winchester. Finest specimen of human molars. Now, let’s walk. We won’t be eating here, and I think you ought to see the place,” he said without missing a beat. Before he knew it, the hand moved from Dean’s shoulder to his own and they were lead towards a tall mirror in the back of the shop, obscured behind various curtains.

“What in the—” He tried to ask what this was, tried to figure out what was going on, but the blows kept coming. The foreign man knocked in a specific pattern on the glass of the mirror, and it pushed open just moments later. When Sam peeked behind the secret door, he saw a tall man with glasses holding the mirror open and a short walkway that lead into a flight of stairs, but he couldn’t see beyond that. “Mr. Veila, what are we doing?”

Dean flicked his head around at the sound of his name and clapped his friend on the shoulder. “Whatever do you mean?  Going to lunch. We discussed it, did we not?”

Apparently it wasn’t peculiar to him that a mirror just opened up to reveal a man and a stairway. Not even a little. “We did discuss lunch, but what we did not discuss was… all of this.” He motioned to the staircase.

Immediately, the doorman gave him a pointed look and asked, “Are ya comin’ or not?”

With a defeated sigh and a cautious glance to gauge his surroundings, Sam stumbled into the new world hiding behind the non-suspect mirror in the barbershop. As he followed Mr. Macleod and Veila down the stairs, the booming of what he could only assume to be live music vibrated him to the core, and he winced at each exceptionally loud blow of the trumpet until the volume seemed to level out, leaving him relieved.

On the way to a small, round table in the middle of the room — right in front of a stage with half a dozen women in minimal clothing brazenly dancing to the music — Dean stopped several times to greet his acquaintances and business partners. This left Sam standing awkwardly and without purpose behind him, like a lost puppy.

When they finally took their seats at this table, a server dropped drink menus off at the table before leaving them alone for a moment. Mr. Macleod took this time to strike a conversation.

“Mr. Winchester—”

“Sam is all right.”

“—what is your business?”

“Stocks.”

“That’s rather unfortunate.”

Sam frowned, taking offense to the demeaning comment. “Well, what’s your business, Mr. MacLeod?”

A smug look on his face, the man decided he didn’t have to answer the question, turning his attention over to Dean across the table instead. “Dean, do you remember the last time we were in the area? How long ago was it?”

Between responses, the server returned with a notepad in her hand and the three of them ordered different alcoholic beverages with small meals to fill their stomachs for the afternoon. “A few months, if I recall. We were across the street - much better food there, I’m sure, but these places come and go like the lives that fill them.”

“I can’t forget the last night we were there as long as I live.” MacLeod laughed suddenly as if reminiscing on good times. “They shot Ramiel there. It was six of us at that table — myself, you, Ramiel, Adam, Ash, and Garth — and we got drunk and ate and got a little more drunk after that. The liquor was good. wasn’t it?”

Dean grunted in agreement.

“They came inside, one of the waiters did, and said somebody wanted to speak with Ramiel outside.”

How strange. Outside? There surely were much less suspect places to speak.

“The waiter was infuriated. He said that they could come inside if they wanted to talk, but if Ramiel were to go outside… so help him. He knew it wasn’t safe, especially not for a man like him. But Ramiel wasn’t so wary. But he told him — he told him not to go outside. Let the bastards come in here, Ramiel, if they want you, at least we have a semblance of a team here if worst comes to it.”

In the pause between his sentences, Sam asked, “Did he go?” Something told him that this story wouldn’t end well, but he couldn’t help his curiosity.

Lifting his nose up to him, MacLeod snorted in a laugh and exchanged one glance with Dean. “Of course he went. He went, all right, told us to save his drink for him, and the instant he left — Bang! Bang! Bang!” He smacked his balled fist on the table three times and it caused Sam to jump up in fright. “Shot that bastard three times in the stomach. Should have seen it coming; the rest of us sure did. He’s lucky they made it so quick. I know if it were me—”

Before he could finish his thought, the server returned with a tray full of drinks for the table, and Sam exhaled in relief. Something told him he didn’t want to know what Mr. Macleod would do if he were in that situation.

“You know what happened to those men? The ones who shot him through the stomach?” He questioned after taking a sip of his whiskey on ice.

With his heart stopping at the question and attention on himself, Sam hesitantly shook his head.

“They were electrocuted. Four of ‘em who were there, five if you include Dick Roman who lead the crew. If you ask me, they shoulda been shot the same way they shot him.” His eyes flickered in an interested way. “I understand you’re lookin’ for a business connection?”

The juxtaposition of the two remarks startled Sam. Dean answered for him just moments later.

“No, no!” He exclaimed. “That’s somebody else! This is Mr. Shurley’s new friend. I know I told you about him.” The emphasis on ‘friend’, complete with a raise of the speaker’s eyebrows, made Sam’s cheeks flush unexpectedly, and he looked around the room with his lips pursed to turn his attention somewhere — anywhere — else.

Mr. MacLeod seemed disappointed, though he nodded shortly and offered an apology to each man at the table. Dean assured him they would discuss the other friend at a later point, but this would not be the time.

The whispers continued beside him and, by the time he tuned back into the conversation, someone had set a plate of food in front of each of them, which Sam eagerly dug into. Sam could hardly consider the food the greatest he’d had in the city, but the bizarre environment of the restaurant more than made up for it.

He could hear the men beside him speaking quietly about business propositions and other such things that he didn’t quite understand. Suddenly, Dean jumped up with a glance at his watch, running off without even excusing himself.

Mr. MacLeod looked at his own watch then told Sam, “He’ll be back. He’s got to telephone San Francisco this afternoon.”

“How do you know him?” Sam questioned, swallowing a bite of his fish.

“Mr. Veila? We met just after he returned from the war and have been invested in one another’s business ventures since our initial meeting. I wasn't in the war, no not me, but he came back and moved to New York from the Middle-West to get away — and it’s a very sad story, what happened to his family — where he made a name for himself quickly. I knew after just an hour of talking that this was a man of fine breeding. Like a purebred bitch, he must have had the finest lineage of any man I’ve met. I told myself, ‘this is the kind of man you would be happy to bring home to meet your mother and father.’ I think very highly of him, and very few people can say that about me. I don’t think highly of anybody, really.”

 _Why was he telling him all this_? None of that information mattered much to him, and he could hardly understand why it would matter to Mr. MacLeod. Regardless, he offered an expression of faux-interest, nodding absently with a mouth full of food he washed down with a hot cup of coffee. Tapping his fingers along the oak table that held three plates and three glasses, he finally cleared his throat. “He’s an interesting fella, an interesting man, I’ll tell you that much,” he said, choosing each of his words carefully.

Tilting his head to the side, Mr. MacLeod combed through the reasons he would likely respond so vaguely. Though he wasn’t _incorrect_ in saying that Dean was interesting, it felt like quite an odd way of describing somebody. “Has he said something off-putting to you, Mr. Winchester? I wouldn’t fret if he has; he’s not used to your type—”

 _“My type?_ ” Sam asked incredulously.

“I don’t mean that in any offensive way. We all live very different lives, don’t we?”

“If you must know, he did say something off-putting on the way to the restaurant this afternoon. He’s a man of mystery, and I don’t like mystery. It rubs me the wrong way. So when he _told_ me I would be taking Gabriel to tea this afternoon—he didn’t ask—so he could ask a favor of me _on Dean’s behalf,_ I didn’t take too well to it. I don’t like secrets.”

“Everybody has secrets.”

“I don’t.”

“Sure you do.” Mr. MacLeod waved his hand to get another whiskey from a server. “Mr. Veila doesn’t ask just anyone to do him favors, you have to understand. He doesn’t trust many people, and who can blame him? But he can get nervous at times. He would never ask a favor from you that wasn’t right, nor would he ever so much as look at a friend’s wife the wrong way.”

Still failing to grasp _why_ any of this even mattered, Sam threw his head backwards with a heavy sigh and pursed his lips together. He didn’t want to be the secret keeper of his friends, nor did he want to be used and taken advantage of for his generosity.

Before he found the words with which to respond without sounding overly irritated, the subject of instinctive trust returned and took a sip of his lemon water. “What have I missed, old sport?” Dean asked while slapping one hand onto his friend’s shoulder.

Sam looked up with wide eyes. “Oh-! We were just talking about other people's’ wives.”

Both of his eyebrows raised in apparent amusement and he let out a hearty laugh from his belly before retaking his seat. “I see. Well, I’m not interested in other people's’ wives, so you can count me out of that discussion.”

The blood rushed to his face as Sam quickly insisted, “I’m not either. We merely—”

The squeaking of a chair moving against the hard floor stopped him mid-sentence — probably for the better — and he looked up to see Mr. MacLeod standing in front of his seat.

“Don’t hurry, Crowley,” he said, but Mr. MacLeod lifted his hand as if to stop him from continuing. “There is still plenty more to discuss.”

“You two continue without me. I must take my leave. It has been a pleasure making your acquaintance, Mr. Winchester, and if you’re ever in search of a business partner…”

“Let him be, Crowley,” Dean demanded.

Ignoring him entirely, the man spun around on his heels and left in a hurry, heading to finish whatever business he had that needed immediate addressing.

When Sam looked back up from the table — which had become the most interesting thing in the world over the course of the last thirty seconds — he realized he and Dean were alone once more, much to his discomfort. But Dean seemed to catch onto this discomfort quickly, because the next words leaving his mouth were, “I’m sorry if I made you angry, old sport. I get the feeling that our discussion in the car left you feeling used, and I need you to know that that is never my intention.”

Hazel eyes darted up to meet the green pair across the table. “You did make me angry. I don’t enjoy being a part of your secret little game, whatever it is you’re trying to play.”

“I’m not trying to _play_ anything, I need you to understand. You are my friend, all right? And friends, they ask each other for help when they need it the most.” There it was again, his smile that melted the rest of the world away and left only them alone in their little bubble. “I desperately need your help.”

“Why does it have to be me? I have nothing that you don’t have. I barely have _anything_ at all,” Sam said, exasperation nagging at his voice.

“Because, Sam, you _do_ have something I want. Something that I, daresay, need. I can’t tell you more, though. Gabriel knows every detail that you need to know and he will inform you of what you need to know at tea.”

Sam had to fight back the frustrated groan and grunt that so desperately wanted to leave his throat, because he was once again left in the dark by this man, but he forced a fake smile to him and nodded in agreement. “If I have more questions, I want to be able to ask you about them. I don’t want to have the discussion off limits, because I already hardly know what I am getting myself into.”

Hesitating for a brief silence, Dean bit down on the inside of his cheek. “All right. I will see you again very soon after the meeting with Mr. Shurley. Probably this evening when you arrive home, and we can discuss any matters you feel pertinent to your agreement or disagreement to my favor. Does that sound fair?”

“It does. Thank you,” he admitted before asking suddenly, “Who is he?”

“Who?”

“Mr. MacLeod — is he an actor?”

“No.”

“A doctor, then?”

“Most certainly not. He’s a gambler, a very good one at that,” Dean answered then coolly added, “He’s the man who fixed the 1919 World Series.”

“Fixed it?” Sam repeated, incredulity filling every muscle on his face without his control. He knew someone had fixed the World Series; after all, it was one of the biggest scandals of his younger years. But one person couldn’t have fixed the World Series. Especially not without help. The idea baffled him. For years, he had assumed that the World Series came to be fixed through a series of preventable events that lead to an inevitable outcome. Never had he considered that there was a single person responsible for the event that impacted many millions of people.

As he pondered the sheer impossibility of such a task, Dean only nodded at him from across the table, allowing him to think. “How did he happen to do that?” Sam finally asked again once the bewilderment had settled.

“Saw the opportunity, I suppose.”

 _Saw the opportunity?_ The idea bounced around in his head, and he needed to know more about these mysterious people he was getting mixed up in, otherwise his fate might be similar to Ramiel’s. At least, if he wasn’t careful enough. “Well, shouldn’t he be in jail?”

As if the mere thought of Mr. MacLeod going to jail was a joke to him, Dean barked a laugh. “Jail! No, no, old sport. They could never catch him, he’s a smart man.”

But surely, smart men went to jail all the time. With a shake of his head, he pushed aside the mostly empty plate in front of him and finished the final sip of his now-cold coffee. The check came, and Dean insisted on covering the bill for the three before rising to his feet with an expectant look down at his friend. “Are you coming?”

“Coming?” He blinked. “Where are we going?”

“To tea, of course. I’ve already told you about it, and you wouldn’t want to leave Gabriel waiting, now would you?”

A defeated sigh pushed out of his lungs. Not that he didn’t feel excited to see Gabriel again, but he would have preferred scheduling their next meeting on his own terms. And without the promise of discussions about Veila and whatever extravagant favor he needed to ask of his neighbor.

— —

The drive to the hotel where Sam went to meet Mr. Shurley for tea was short but by the time Dean dropped him off, the sun had set below the horizon, leaving the sky a deep shade of purple for only a few minutes. “Go inside,” Veila had said in the parking lot, “and follow the crowds. People will be headed up some stairs, and you’ll find yourself on a roof overlooking the city. There, Mr. Shurley will be awaiting your arrival. _Don’t keep him waiting_.”

Repeating the directions in his mind, Sam made his way through the crowded lobby of a hotel, following hoards of people until finding a flight of stairs that lead to the roof. He followed the beaten path, and sure enough found himself standing on a bustling rooftop with circular tables set up every couple of feet with hardly any room to sit. His height made it easy enough to scan through the crowd to find his companion for the evening, and when he spotted him in the furthest corner of the roof, seated in a tall chair with his serious gaze overlooking the New York skyline, Sam swiftly moved through the people, ducking under a waiters arm and pushing through overly large groups of strangers until he reached his destination.

“What is this all about?” He demanded. “Veila comes and picks me up in his big yellow car, he tells me that I’m taking you to tea this evening. Doesn’t ask, _tells_. And he tells me you have secrets to tell me, as if he can’t tell me himself! This is—”

 _“Sh!_ Lower your voice!” Gabriel hushed him sharply. “We’re in public!”

“And then he says he’s got a _favor_ to ask of me. He goes on and on about the war, about his family, and God! Not only that, but he introduced me to a strange man who tried to — he tried to get me into business with them?! While wearing actual human molars on his—”

“He wants you to invite Castiel to tea,” Gabriel snapped.

Sam fell silent. “Dean… and… _Castiel_? Why?”

With his lips pursed, he dug through the pocket of his slacks. When his hand came back out, it was holding a couple of folded up sheets of paper with creases and wrinkles that seemed to indicate it had been kept balled up and neglected for a bit of time. Handing the pieces of paper over to him, a small sigh escaped his lips, and he cleared his throat. “Have a look.”

“What is this?” Hesitantly, he took the paper between his fingers and took great care in unfolding them, as if they were ancient artifact that would fall apart if handled too roughly.

“A letter,” he said obviously. “Dean wrote it to Castiel, and it arrived right before Castiel was to marry Kelly, after he’d given up hope entirely of Dean coming back to him.”

Sam grazed his fingertips across the first words on the paper; the date, which read 17 July 1919. “Coming back to him?” He repeated with a curious cock of his head, looking across the small table while taking a seat now that he felt more comfortable.

“They met in Louisville, when Castiel was the most popular bachelor in town. The wives left behind by soldiers to go to war, they were all over him. Back then, his phone never seemed to stop ringing, and every few days a new woman would be on his arm as he wandered the city. Sometimes his family would host parties, and they had always thought quite highly of him.” He offered something that resembled a smile to his companion, but pain was evident as he told the story. “One day, I was out golfing on the lawn in my brand new English shoes. Someone called to me, called out my name, and I looked to see it was Castiel. What an honor! I thought to myself when he beckoned me closer.”

As he told the story, Sam propped his elbow onto the table while resting his chin in his hand, drawing closer to Gabriel while he told the story.

“He asked me if I was volunteering that evening — and I was! So he requested I let them know that he would not be joining them that evening, and I wanted to know why. That’s when I noticed the man sitting in his front seat, and as Castiel introduced me to him, I noticed a look in this man's eyes. Dean Veila was his name, and he stared at him… God! He looked at him in the way all people would like to be looked at sometime.”

As in the same way that Sam was looking at Gabriel, hanging on to his every word, enamored by the way his features moved to express his points.

“Anyway, Dean was a soldier. He left and returned to the war just days later. And Castiel, he promised he would wait for him,” Gabriel’s tone was solemn, nostalgic even, then he grabbed a biscuit from the tray of appetizers in the middle of the table. “Read the letter. That will tell you what you need to know, far better than I could ever.”

The sudden change of tone startled Sam out of his daydream. _Right! the letter._ He took one side of the paper between each of his hands and pulled it tight to straighten it out and make it readable.

 _My dearest Castiel,_ the letter began in curvy handwriting. _I’m sure you’ve wondered where I have been. It has been two years since we last saw one another, since I last got to touch your perfect face and kiss your soft lips. Oh! How I’ve missed holding your hand as we walk through the dim lights of your family gardens, laughing, dreaming of a future where we could be together. An impossible future, we feared at one time. Yet we never let it get the best of us. If anybody could beat those odds and live happily after all we face on the road ahead, I feel it would be us._

Reading just the beginning of the letter had Sam’s heart swelling in his chest. He empathized with these sentiments deeply. The letter continued on to tell grandiose stories of what their lives could be together, telling of all the ways Dean promised to stand by his former lover’s side in the face of hardships.

When the dreams and visions of their future together concluded, he moved on to speak about the present and the past.

_Two years ago, I made you a promise before I left, and I still intend to keep it. I know I could never leave you behind and I knew that from the first moment I ever saw your blue eyes, bluer than the midday sky,  bluer than the ocean in its deepest depths. However, the war proved difficult and took more of a toll on me than I ever could have expected. Shortly after my promotion to Major, a friend of mine — a fellow soldier with whom I spent much of my time — died in a tragedy in France, and I continue to struggle to make my recovery. Before every combat, I gripped a letter you sent me tight to my chest, then I tucked it into my pocket for safekeeping._

_I stood by on the sidelines that day, clutching your letter in my balled fist, and a dozen of my men died due to my negligence. To this day, I carry the guilt with me, and I can hardly think about living a happy life without feeling weighed down because_ **_they_ ** _will never experience such happiness because of my own stupidity. Only now am I capable of allowing myself happiness, and I come to you with the sincerest of apologies because I kept you from what you truly wanted._

_But that is not why I write to you today._

_As I explained, unfortunate circumstances complicated my return to Louisville after the war ended. I had other personal affairs to sort out than those I mentioned, and I hadn’t a clue where to write to you. But I want to reach out and inform you now of where I am at in my own personal life. I will be returning to Louisville in a matter of weeks, and should you be interested, I would like it if I could take you to dinner. My expected arrival date will be the twenty-ninth of July, and I will visit the tree at the park where we used to roam upon my arrival. If you should wish to see me again, I will stay until sundown before heading off to follow other pursuits. I hope to see you then._

The letter ended with an endearing address and Dean’s scribbled, illegible signature. By the time Sam finished reading, tears prickled in the corners of his eyes, threatening to fall every time he blinked. Folding the old sheets of paper along the creases back into a square, he passed it back to Gabriel without a word.

“The wedding continued as planned, but he was hysterical. I was one of the groomsmen, and I came in to visit him that afternoon. ‘ _Tell them Cas has changed his mind!’_ he shouted, throwing the balled up sheets of paper across the room. Kelly’s mother came in and talked him down from his hysterics, and my father helped as well,” Gabriel explained under his breath, stirring his tea absently.

“At four o’clock that afternoon, Kelly walked down the aisle and became his wife. They had a son as soon as they could, and I’ve never seen two people love anything as much as they love their child. But a piece of Cas has always been missing. He’s never been the same since he learned that Dean wanted to come back. He told me, just the other day, that he can still picture it in his mind. He can picture Dean standing under the willow in the park at the edge of the lake, waiting until the sun set below the horizon on that rainy day.”

Sam had to inhale slowly, steadily, before he could bring himself to look at the man who had gone silent. Their eyes danced when they met, awe filling his eyes while hope radiated from Gabriel’s eyes, and he already knew what his answer would be.

Still, Sam sat with his lips parted and one arm laying across the table while the other held his head. “The modesty of it all…” he whispered. “All these years… all this waiting… and he just wants me to invite him to tea?”

“That’s his only request,” Gabriel confirmed, and he reached out to brush his fingertips along the other man’s hand. “Have Castiel over for tea at your place and Dean will happen upon the gathering.”

One glance down at their hands caused his stomach to flip upside down and blood rushed to his bearded cheeks against Sam’s will. He made no attempts to move his hand away.

Part of him had to wonder why he needed the entire background between the couple before he could answer the request, but it didn’t matter. He knew their history, and it broke his heart. Sam himself had nearly been forced into marriage before, though he miraculously slipped out of the arrangement early enough.

“Does Castiel want to see him?” Sam asked after a moment's thought.

This triggered an instantaneous reaction from Gabriel, who bolted upright and leaned in close—very close—to the man across the table. “Castiel is not to know about this. He will come over to have lunch or tea with his cousin, when Dean stumbles across you two.”

_Hm._

“All right. Do you know when Dean would like this to happen?”

“Talk to him this evening, and work out a time which works for the pair of you.”

Silence fell between them after that, and only a few minutes later did they leave the rooftop tea garden in favor of a more private stroll through a nearby park. The purple in the sky had faded to black, but the moon guided them through the night and down the paved path.

Only a few minutes into their walk, they fell into an easy rhythm of conversation. Gabriel would ask a question about Sam’s life, he would reply—no matter how sad the answer would be—and Sam asked a similar question in response. Once they got the hang of this, they ended up branching off into related discussions. It didn’t take long for Gabriel to be laughing so hard that his head fell against Sam’s shoulder, and suddenly Sam’s arm was wrapped around his torso, and they found themselves standing on a bridge with their bodies pressed together, unable to keep the smiles off of their faces.

“I never did get the chance to ask you to dinner,” Sam whispered, dropping his gaze to look at the man who buried his head against the nape of his neck.

“I seemed to have forced your hand, didn’t I?”

He laughed then turned his body so they were face-to-face. “So you did…” Unwrapping his arm from his waist, he slipped one of his hands into the smaller one near him, lacing their fingers together. “I can’t complain though. You’re a wonderful man, and any way I am able to spend time with you is more than welcome.”

Even though he knew how ridiculous he sounded, he couldn’t help it. Something about this man—the same man that nearly scared him into apologizing for merely walking into the same room as him just days before—felt like home. Sure they had only known each other for a matter of days, but that didn’t negate the way he felt deep in his bones.

Everybody else in Sam’s life seemed to have a partner, an equal, somebody to hold. He had no such thing. But he did have the man in his arms, so he held a hand on his waist and drew him closer until Gabriel stood on his tiptoes and broke out into a smile. Drawing him closer still, he only stopped when their faces were level, and only to move his hand from his waist and to his face. His thumb brushed over the sharpness of his rough jaw, then he pulled him in until their lips met in the middle and moved in sync like dancers in the ballet.

Sam and Gabriel took the same cab home to West Egg together that night. When they arrived, Dean was waiting near the white wooden swing on the porch of Sam’s little cottage, fidgeting and twitching every moment.

It took just a few seconds for the man to notice the cab pulling up and driving away from their homes, to notice the two men moving close together while laughter filled the air between them. When he heard his neighbor, Dean called out, “Sam! You made it back!” Then he offered a polite nod to Gabriel.

“It’s good to see you, Dean. What are you doing on my porch, though?” He raised both eyebrows, only visible once he moved closer to him and into the light illuminating the porch.

“Waiting for you, of course!”

“Well, I thought about your request. The _favor_ you asked of me. When would you like Castiel to come over?”

The question made every last one of Dean’s features light up, and so much joy appeared to fill him that the other men couldn’t help but worry he may start crying. “When works for you, old sport? Tomorrow, or perhaps the next day? Any day this week, as long as we aren’t getting in _your_ way!”

“My schedule is flexible. How about the day after tomorrow?”

“Perfect!” He exclaimed. “I’ll need to trim your lawn, shape the hedges, deliver flowers… there is much to do, but you don’t need to worry about a thing.”

“If you insist.”

“I do! All right, then. I’m going to take my leave, if that’s okay with you, and I will see you the day after the next.”

Without so much as another glance in their direction, Dean hurried off and into his grandiose home to plan the perfect meeting scene for him and his old love.

Once alone again, Gabriel barked a laugh. “Well! That was eventful!” He cried out before Sam crashed their lips together to shut him up. After pushing the door open with his elbow, they made their way through the cluttered collection of rooms in his little shack, focused on nothing but each other as they stumbled over shoes and books until making it to bed.


	4. Chapter 4

Reunited. Today was the day Dean would reunite with Castiel after five years. As he paced along the mahogany floors of his bedroom, he ran his fingers through his short hair. God, he didn't design this bedroom well... With all of his clothes located on the upper level and the only mirrors right behind his bed, he had to rush up and down the stairs every time he tried to get dressed. Typically, it didn't give him issues, as he could usually gather an outfit without trying it on first. Not today. Not with so much depending on this one day. He finally decided to throw a couple dozen outfits on his bed from the balcony. Then, he rushed down the spiral staircase to the main level.

Out of the corner of his eye, Dean saw his reflection in a mirror half the size of his wall. His dirty blond hair laid flat against his head, water from his shower dripping slowly down the side of his face. A small patch of hair on the sharpest point of his jaw grabbed his attention. He must have missed a spot while shaving this morning, but that would be an easy fix...

Dean flipped through the outfits on his bed quickly, looking through shirts made from the finest silks and suit jackets that would be just light enough so he didn’t sweat in the mid-summer heat.

The first outfit he put together was a simple, black button-up shirt with little white stars barely bigger than a fleck of dust covering the fabric, combined with a pair of black slacks and a black belt around the waist. The instant he saw it in the mirror, however, he began to strip free from it. Too much black. He didn’t need to look like he was attending a funeral while reuniting with the one love of his life.

 _Next outfit_. Tossing the colorless outfits over his shoulder and onto the floor behind him, Dean stared blankly at the bed. Shades of lavenders and roses and daffodils and bluebells spread across his black and white duvet, and he brushed his fingers over each and every article of clothing sitting there, as if waiting for one to speak to him.

When nothing called to him, he stormed up the stairs back to his closet. None of the colors on his bed were quite right. None of it was good enough for Castiel.

Digging through the clothes dangling from hangers, grumbling nonsense under his breath, he tried to find the right style of clothing to start. A suit would work well, but he’d already determined that black was too formal and depressing. Pastels didn’t feel quite like him today, even the ones with patterns or stripes to liven them up.

Suddenly, a golden tie caught his eye, so he snatched it and dropped it down to the bed below. _Baby blue!_ He gasped at the idea. If he could find a shirt in the proper shade of blue—the same one as Castiel’s unforgettable eyes—it would match the metallic-colored tie. Once he knew what to look for, he found the exact powder blue button-up top he had in mind, and dropped it down to meet the tie.

Now… what color jacket and slacks could he wear? The same blue as his shirt could work with the right waistcoat underneath, but it might be pushing it.

From the corner of his eye, as he scanned the closet space, he saw a tawny brown waistcoat hanging next to a white suit jacket. Not willing to waste a moment that morning, he bolted across the room with purpose and took the waistcoat, its corresponding handkerchief, and the white blazer and pants. Within moments, they were sitting on the bed with the rest of his ensemble while he foraged through drawers to find cufflinks.

For those, something simple would do. He wouldn’t need anything fantastical, as long as it matched the metal collar bar, which wouldn’t be an issue because all of his links came in sets.

Dean yelled, “aha!” when he found a set of golden cufflinks engraved with his initials — the same initials that adorned the tiles in his home entryway and the black ring that constantly sat on his right little finger — and he quickly grabbed a pin for his tie in the same color. Now, all he had left to do was dress and style his hair.

Putting together the ensemble had been a much harder task than actually sticking it on his body to wear. Thankfully, all of his clothes were picked out by a tailor in Europe for him every season, so he never had to worry about ill-fitting clothes, and he liked to think he had an eye for color.

When the outfit had been put together entirely, including the ring on his finger and the decorative walking cane in his hand, Dean took a moment to admire his outfit in the mirror.

Without another thought, Dean marched out of his room, silver cane in hand, and headed straight to his front door where an army of crews were awaiting his instructions.

“I need the grass cut in my neighbor’s yard and the bushes trimmed and shaped. I also need flowers — many of them — to fill up his home. Just knock on his door and he’ll know exactly what is happening. They must be hydrangeas, and they are to come directly from my gardens,” he instructed in a loud voice to whoever was listening.  “The baked goods and hors d'oeuvres are to be displayed neatly in the sitting room in which we will have tea. Everything is to look perfect, understand?”

A few utterances in agreement came before the employees of Veila’s scrambled off different directions to fulfill their duties for the day.

Content with this, he followed the smell of fresh bacon and cinnamon rolls until reaching the kitchen where he found one of his chefs cooking up a fresh breakfast. To his side, a small team of the chefs were decorating macarons in vibrant colors that matched the pastel outfits he’d considered earlier in the day.

“Save some food for yourselves,” Dean told his crew, propping himself against the wall with a dreamy smile. “I won’t need much to get me through today.”

The head chef making the breakfast nodded briefly in response but didn’t look up even for a moment from the sizzling bacon in the pan before him.

Breakfast was served to him on a plate mere minutes later, and with it came the newspaper The Journal for him to skim through, as if any of the news would impact him. Nothing would put a damper on this day — not even the rain called for until four in the afternoon.

Dean sat at the table located just beside the open kitchen with a fork in one hand and the other hand pressing the newspaper down on the table to read. Every other headline blasted the word ‘scandal’ as if it meant nothing, and he rolled his eyes as he read through. To nobody’s surprise, a wealthy man named Arthur Ketch who lived in East Egg was likely cheating on his wife with some unfit woman down in West Egg.

His lips pursed in thought as he skimmed through the rest of the articles. By the time he finished, his breakfast was gone, and the plate had been taken by the kitchen staff for cleaning.

Now that everything he needed to take care of personally had been done, Dean allowed himself to leave the mansion and head towards Sam’s house just across the walkway. Nearly a dozen men were overfilling his front lawn that had apparently already been mowed down, much to his pleasure. “Perfect,” he muttered to himself, before calling out, “Good morning, old sport! Your lawn looks wonderful!”

A crooked smile, spreading from ear to ear, covered Sam’s face before he waved in return. “Good morning. It’s all thanks to you! And it smells — wow, it smells great in here! Did the flowers come from a store?”

“My gardens, actually!”

“Your gardens? Well, I bought a small bouquet when I went to town this morning. See, I forgot the tea, and we couldn’t have that. I passed by a bouquet, and I thought it would be nice, but…” With one backwards glance at the entire greenhouse filling his home now, he laughed under his breath.

“That’s thoughtful of you, old sport. I appreciate it, and I’ll be sure to have my people put it in a vase for display. Now! Show me around the house, why don’t you?”

The sudden change of subject forced Sam to take a mental step back so he could follow along but, after only a moment of processing, he walked through the front door of his little house. Dean followed close behind. The smell of freshly blooming flowers overwhelmed Dean’s senses, but he continued to follow his more than slightly confused neighbor through his home.

The house was cute. In the entry hallway, there was a tall wooden hook for coats and hats to hang, which sat close to a cubby at ground level filled with clean pairs of shoes. To the left, there was a hallway with two doors on each side. On the right side sat the sitting room — which had been filled by fragrant blossoms from the gardens and baked goods from the kitchens.

Tapping his fingers along his thigh with his eyes darting around the room, he smiled over at the tall man beside him. “It looks nice,” he offered.

“It barely fits me. I just hope it’s all right for this afternoon’s tea.”

“It will be quite fine. The sofa here? We can sit there to talk. And there’s a seat right here—” Dean moved to the back corner of the room, right by the glass door and windows that opened out to the bay in his yard, and took a seat on the love seat in the corner. “Yes, this will work. I was thinking, actually… The paper said it is supposed to stop raining around four o’clock this afternoon, which is when he will arrive. What if we go sailing? I’ve got a boat, and I learned how to sail many years ago.”

Sam looked at him with his eyebrows furrowed. “I wouldn’t want to intrude—”

“You wouldn’t be!” Desperation hinted in his voice, and for the first time, Sam could see just how nervous Dean was about this. Five years, he had been waiting to reunite with his old love. Five years, he spent building this moment up in his head, only for it to arrive on hardly a day’s notice. This was a married man with a young son, and there was certainly the possibility for rejection from the old flame. Many things could go wrong — this Dean knew — but they wouldn’t. They couldn’t.

Pausing for just a moment to stare at the wide-eyed man sitting in his living room, Sam pursed his lips but nodded subtly to him. “If you insist. But any time you feel I should go… I’ll be on my way. I have errands to run, you see,  so I can’t stay for the entirety of the day.”

A disappointed sigh fell from the green-eyed man’s lips. “Of course, old sport. I won’t keep you longer than you can stay, but I think it may be nice to spend time with you as well.”

Across the room, Sam moved slowly to sit down on the three-cushioned sofa with one of his legs crossed over the other.

The only noise in the room was the ticking of the clock sitting on the mantle, reminding Dean of the time slipping away until the moment he saw Castiel once again. “You don’t make much money, do you?” He asked in an attempt to veer his attention away from the anxiety eating away at him.

Clearly taken aback by the question, Sam shifted his positioning just a bit, resting his right arm across the back of the sofa. “No. No, I don’t make much.”

“I have a little business on the side, you see? Now, I know you don’t know much about me or my job, but I have some connections. A few things I run, a sort of — they’re under the table, if you will. Pardon my asking, but you’re selling bonds, aren’t you?”

“Trying to.”

“That’s what I thought. I think you may benefit from — well, this should interest you. Nothing that would take up much of your time, and you should pick up a good amount of money if you do it well. And-!” Dean noticed the way Sam shifted his weight from one hip to the other, so he tried to be brief. “It’s not difficult to do well. See, I have a position available, if you’re willing to keep things confidential.”

Even from across the room, he could see Sam’s eyes darting around helplessly, clearly unsure of where they belonged or how he could respond.

Quickly, Dean reassured him, “It’s got nothing to do with Mr. MacLeod, if that has you worried.”

“No, it’s not that,” Sam answered hesitantly. “I have other obligations; my hands are quite full and I couldn’t take on another load if I wanted to. Thank you, though, for the generous offer.”

Dean pressed his lips together in a small frown that he made no attempts to hide, then nodded in response. “All right, old sport. But if you change your mind—”

“I’ll let you know.”

Not another word left either of their lips, and the silence hanging between them felt anxious at best. The cane in his hand began to tap against the wooden floors beneath his chair without a thought, and he only noticed upon feeling Sam’s piercing gaze through his skull. The tapping came to an abrupt stop.

The rain continued to pick up speed outside, unlike what the newspaper had predicted for this time of day. Lightning crackled across the sound and thunder shook the small cottage they sat inside.

As they sat wordlessly — the workers long gone by now — Dean finally took a look at the clock. He could barely sit still, with his eyes and lips twitching every time he thought about the time, and eventually, the _tick tock_ of the clock became a nagging noise like nails on a chalkboard.

When he saw the time on the clock, he tossed the cane into the air to catch it near the bottom then stood at once.

“Nobody is coming to tea,” he announced, dropping his merely decorative cane onto the floor and grasping it by the slender handle.

“Don’t be silly,” Sam scolded. “It’s only two minutes to four!”

“If anybody were coming, they’d be here by now!” However, when his friend looked at him in such a condescending manner, he fell back into the seat miserably, slumping his shoulders down and hunching his back forward. This gave him the impression of being four inches shorter, and much sadder than he truly felt.

Just as he fell into his miserable posture, the growling of a car motor turning onto their street and approaching the remarkably tiny house had him perking back up. An instantaneous panic set in, flowing deep in Dean’s bones, twisting his stomach in knots. He wasn’t ready, not for such a big moment.

Without a word, Sam went outside to greet the car underneath the dripping lilac tree, the car which he immediately recognized to be Castiel’s. The driver opened the door for him to duck outside, holding an umbrella over his head to shield him and his lavender suit from the pouring rain.

“Tell your driver to come back later,” he directed, offering his arm to his cousin to help him get out of the car.

Over his shoulder, Castiel called, “Come back in an hour, Ferdie!” Then, he turned to his cousin with an ecstatic smile on his face. “Is this absolutely where you live, my dearest one?”

The thrill of his voice moved up and down like the exhilarating rides on Coney Island, and he had to hold himself back from laughing. “It’s not much, but I take the utmost pleasure in calling it my home. Something of my very own, you see?”

“Of course,” Castiel said, then leaned in close to whisper in his ear. “Now… why did I have to come alone? Do you have a secret to tell me?”

His laugh came sharply, and he led him across the stone path, inside the cottage with a smile. “I don’t have any secrets.” With that, he twisted the doorknob and held the door open for him.

This was the first time Sam saw his home after Veila’s crew finished up and to say it was overwhelming would be a vast understatement. On every table, counter, couch, and shelf where they could fit, bouquets of flowers were nestled in their own temporary homes. There were hundreds of orchids of varying colors as far as the eye could see, and something about it made his home feel more crowded than normal. At the same time, it was a beautiful sight to behold, for it only went to show how deeply Dean’s love for Castiel went.

Just a foot away, Castiel seemed to be in the same overwhelmed state of awe as he tried to take in the extravagance of this meeting, his eyes bright and excited.

They walked through the entryway together until the hall opened up into a room. To Sam’s surprise, the living room was deserted. “Well, that’s funny!” He exclaimed. Lips turned down into a frown, he walked towards the glass doors and peeked outside, unable to find any hint of the man that filled the room just minutes before.

“What’s funny?” Just as Castiel spoke, a knock — timid and insecure — came through the front door, and Sam scurried off to go check it out.

Sure enough, Dean stood there, rain dripping from every crevice in his face and soaking his hair flat against his head, with all the dignity of a lost puppy. He was pale as death as he glared tragically into Sam’s eyes, and his hands were buried deep into his pockets.

“What are you doing?!” Sam hissed, careful not to let the man in the next room overhear him, dragging the soaking man inside the house by the tie.

Desperation clinging to his strained voice, he responded in a whisper, “I can’t do it!”

“You don’t have another choice! Cas is in there all alone—”

“Figure something else out! This is a terrible, terrible mistake, old sport, and I—”

“ _You_ made me invite him over for tea, just so you could fulfill this fantasy in your head — and now you’re saying, you want to leave him all alone in there? You’re being very rude, and what’s more is you’re acting like a little boy!”

Apparently, that was enough to light a fire under his rear end, because Dean ran both of his hands through his dripping hair before silently marching past his friend and into the next room over. Sam followed hesitantly behind.

Castiel didn’t know what to expect when he heard the whispers die out and footsteps growing nearer to him. The second voice sounded _almost_ familiar, like when he smelled a loaf of bread with the spices just right so they threw him back years into the past. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t identify it.

When he turned around to see his company, his green eyes were the first thing Castiel noticed about the man in his old friend’s living room. Even with only half his face showing to him, the man’s familiar eyes twinkled from across the room. Faded freckles littered across his face like angel kisses showed themselves to the man, then his whole body turned to face him. A smile brighter than the sun itself beamed at Cas and all at once, he felt himself falling in love once again. A sleek white suit, dripping with water onto the floor, framed his broad, relaxed shoulders and the color of a golden necktie momentarily stole the attention from his face.

When a hand reached out to brush across Cas’s shoulder, he realized he had forgotten to breathe. This man had been nowhere but his dreams for five years but now he was real. He was real as anyone could be, with his pink lips curled up in a coy smile and dimples indenting his soft cheeks. After all this time, Dean Veila stood before him once again.

“Give us a minute, would you, old sport?” He asked in a whisper that only enticed Cas to lean in closer, motioning towards Sam but never removing his gaze from his ex-lover.

More than happy to oblige, Sam grabbed his jacket and keys and left them alone in his house.

Slowly, lost in the man in front of him, Castiel stepped forward. Dean met his eyes eagerly, reaching his hand forward to brush against his old lovers’, whose heart stopped for a moment at the touch he’d longed for so long. When Cas moved his left hand up, he allowed his knuckles to drag against Dean’s cheek, for no other reason but to check if this man before him was real. A tear ran down his right cheek when he felt the shape of his jaw, the roughness of his stubble, against his skin.

For just one moment longer, they took in the appearance of the other entirely, from head to toe, then their eyes met and they stared together at each other, alone in space.

Neither one wanted to break the silence. They wanted to keep staring into one another’s eyes, but somebody had to speak eventually, and Cas decided it would be him. “Well… I certainly am glad to see you again,” he whispered tenderly, wiping his tear away with the back of his thumb.

“I…” Dean stared helplessly into his blue eyes. “I’m certainly glad to see you.”

With his heart pounding in his chest and into his throat, Cas removed his hand from his cheek and stepped further into the room before sitting down on the sofa. Dean moved in sync with him, just as they moved five years prior, and one of his arms rested on the back of the couch behind his head.

Another silence lingered between them as Dean took a minute to observe the vividly pastel purple tuxedo, and Cas took the time to take in each of the many coordinating colors on the other man’s outfit. The golds and yellows brought out the most beautiful flecks of the same color in his green eyes, and he felt himself getting lost once again in those beautiful eyes.

“I never expected to see you again,” he admitted. “I got your letter. The day of the wedding, the letter was delivered to me by hand, and…” With a solemn look, his head turned downwards, though it only took two seconds before his head was nudged back up by two soft fingertips, bringing their faces closer once again. “I imagined you waiting for me. It was rainy that day — quite — and I left you all alone without an explanation.”

“But you’re here now.”

“That evening has haunted me for three years now.”

“I just want you here and now, Castiel. I spent five years suffering without you, five years trying to bring myself to forgive myself for not writing to you sooner, for not coming back, for leaving you alone during the war. But never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d ever be back in your presence. I want us to focus on this moment, right here.”

Castiel frowned with his eyebrows furrowed, working to wrap his mind around the idea. So much guilt had weighed him down since the last time he saw his love that got away, it hardly seemed right to pretend he didn’t feel any of that. Dean deserved to know how much he wanted to be with him — though maybe he was scared of hearing that they _couldn’t_ be together, and that is why they never reunited.

Shaking his head free of the worries, he allowed the relieved smile to return to his lips, one of his hands resting on his knee. “My apologies, Dean. Perhaps we can catch up on all that we have missed in the lives of each other later. I’d like to know what you have been up to.”

“Later,” Dean answered, then they fell into a comfortable conversation, full of laughter and crying and laughter again. Something felt different between them as they grew re-acquainted, but perhaps it was just the five years missing from their lives together.

Somewhere near half of an hour later, when the sun shined high in the sky and no grey clouds were to be seen, Sam returned to his home from the fabric of protection offered to him by the leaves of a large black tree. He went straight into the kitchen where a kettle of tea had been left on the stove to keep warm while he was away, and he poured himself a cup. “I’m back!” He yelled to the couple in his living room.

No answer came. Sipping his tea, lips pursed in confusion, he stepped to the next room across the hall to find the pair engrossed in conversation. As Dean spoke animatedly, Cas leaned closer with every word as if the men were magnets bound ceaselessly to one another through no fault of their own. They were drawn helplessly together, so much so that they failed to notice the third body in the tiny room.

It was only when Sam began to snack on the bright colored macarons — flavored just as they appeared in color — that they seemed to take notice of him. Cas looked over, cheeks smeared with tears, and laughed with joy at the sight of him, dabbing at his cheeks with the cream handkerchief in his pocket.

Initially, Dean continued to stare at his lover with a smile, but the instant he noticed his attention had strayed, he turned his attention backward, jumped out of his seat at the sight of his neighbor, and laughed brightly. “Hello, there, old sport!” He exclaimed as if he hadn’t seen him in years. There was a moment in which Sam wondered if he would shake his hand, but the man made no attempt to move closer.

“It’s stopped raining.”

“Has it?” He asked incredulously then tilted his head upwards, focusing his attention on the room, observing the bright light pouring in through the windows in the room. “Would you look at that? It’s stopped raining! The sun is bright as ever. We could go on that sailboat now — how do you think of that, old sport?”

Sam blinked twice. He’d hoped he had gotten out of boating with his cousin and his lost love. “Don’t ask me; ask Castiel how he feels about it.”

At the suggestion, two bright green orbs stared over at Cas with hope and wonder filling them.

Dean was glowing. It was as if reuniting with somebody from five years before had made the man five years younger and just as happy as he’d been back then, far happier than he looked in the photograph from his Oxford days. That overwhelming joy radiated off of him.

Lost in his thoughts, Sam barely overheard him asking his lover to go with him on his sailboat. “I live just next door, you see,” he heard him saying. “If you’d like, I can show you where I live. There’s much to do, even more to see. I think you’ll quite like my home.”

“You live here?” The revelation nearly made the cup of tea go tumbling out of Cas’s hands. “In West Egg?”

“Why, yes! Sam here is my neighbor. That’s why I asked _him_ to host us for tea this afternoon.”

As if everything suddenly made sense all at once, from Gabe’s comments before dinner the other day to the private discussions Cas and Dean must have had that afternoon, Cas jumped up from his seat. “I would very much like to see your house, Dean. If it’s anything like the mansions surrounding Sam’s little place here — which is _very_ adorable and so very _you_ , if I might add — then it must be spectacular.”

“Well, I spent three years saving enough money to afford it, you understand.”

 _Saving it?_ On the way to the restaurant a few days prior, he’d said that he inherited his money from his family. But now he claimed to have earned it. Shaking his head, deciding it was an issue for another day, he popped another macaron in his mouth and looked to his two friends.

Half a minute passed where nobody spoke, and Cas walked out of the house with the others trailing behind, looking around with bright and curious eyes to find this house that Dean spoke of. When he saw a mansion, standing taller than the Palace of Versailles, he inhaled a sharp, disbelieving gasp and cried out, “Is that the one? Oh, it’s beautiful!”

Moving to his side, Dean grazed one of his hands over the fabric of his purple suit, doing everything in his ability to keep them as close as possible while keeping things appropriate. When he managed to follow his gaze and spot the same house he was looking at, he appeared to give the man’s waist a squeeze before pressing his lips to his cheeks. “That’s the one.”

“I don’t see how you live in there all alone,” he decided as he arched his back into his touch, unable to keep himself from smiling.

“I don’t. See, I keep it always full of interesting people, night and day. People who do interesting things. _Celebrated_ people. There is never a moment where I don’t have somebody with me in the home,” Dean whispered.

They walked along the brick walkway that curved around trees and up hills until arriving at the front gates (which were shaped with a large DV in the center). Upon their arrival, a servant in charge of security opened the gigantic metal gates, and Cas craned his neck up to see every last detail of the mansion.

The windows on the upper level had been opened by a maid who was still popping into each window to make sure they opened just enough to catch the sunlight and the late afternoon breeze. There was something that resembled a steeple at the very top, making the building at least a story taller than it actually was. In the light of the sun, the entire front of the home lit up blindingly, sunlight reflecting off of white marble, and Cas’s grin spread from one ear to the other.

Throwing one glance backward at the owner of the house, a grin on his lips, he ran up the paved circle drive where a fountain with a man riding a horse took up two stories in height and half a story in width, spewing water from its mouth and into the pool beneath it. Even from across the huge yards, Sam and Dean could hear his thrilling laugh as he looked at the brilliant architecture making up this home.

“Would you care to go inside?” Dean asked when he finally caught up with him, pressing his hands against the small of his back and his waist to show his love to him.

“That would be splendid!” Cas cried out then followed Dean through the doors that two more servants pulled open for them. The sight of the deeply colored marble floors lining the entire open entry area took his breath away, and he immediately rushed to take a look at the giant initials taking up a fourth of the floor in gold lettering, sitting just beneath a glittering chandelier that blew to one side in the wind that came in from the outside doors.

The house looked different when it wasn’t filled to the brim with drunken partygoers and their drivers or partners for the night, but the basics of it felt the same. It just seemed… _bigger_ now that it wasn’t so cramped.

Sam’s eyes darted around the home with far less excitement — but also far fewer nerves — than he did the first time around. It wasn’t that he didn’t like being in the presence of both Dean and Castiel, not at all. But he didn’t have any desire to stand around while they re-sparked the flame they once had. The only reason he didn’t leave when they ran off beneath the balcony with the piano was because he feared Dean may find himself in a panic without his presence.

As a small sigh left his parted lips, a sudden shout of “Zeddmore!” yanked him away from his own mind, and he turned his undivided attention to the balcony where, just a few minutes later, he heard a classical piano piece playing, echoing through the room without a care in the world. The song didn’t have a name to him, though perhaps it would be easier to identify if it wasn’t so choppy.

When he looked back to find Dean and Cas, Sam saw a stack of pillows sitting in the middle of the floor — almost like a fort — where Dean had positioned himself casually while his partner danced through the hall, his laughter filling the room.

It only took a few seconds for Cas to beckon his cousin closer, closer, until he snatched his hand and pulled him close, spinning him in a circle on the makeshift dance floor. Sam couldn’t help his own laughter that matched the melody of his new dance partner’s. They spun each other in circles while moving from one side of the room to the other, though they were still unable to make use of the entirety of the gargantuan room.

The first song came to an abrupt end, leaving a silence hanging in the air until the piano restarted with some classical Beethoven. Cas released Sam’s hands after only a moment, shimmying his way over to the man sitting on the floor with hearts in his eyes.

Their hands connected, and for a moment, they froze.

As if time stopped around them, they stared at one another, neither of their bodies moving even a breath. Then suddenly, the purple-clad man ran across the marble floors with their hands locked, stopping square in the middle of the logo that held the initials ‘DV’.

Dean, not watching where he was going, slammed right into Cas’s chest. But Cas continued just like nothing had happened, swiftly moving them across the room in a gentle waltz. In sync like they were a part of the same body, they flowed through the room, dancing in it like water on a hot pan.

Left alone across the room, Sam slowly made his way towards the piles of pillows in the middle of the floor before lowering himself onto them, watching the duo twirl and dip and spin around with one another. God! He wished Gabe was with them.

Before he realized he got lost in fantasies of dancing once more with Gabriel in his arms, the music stopped playing and there was silence. Looking up from the pillow sitting in his lap, he saw Dean standing mere inches from Cas, watching his every move. He tracked his eyes when he began to examine the home — full of marble busts and oil paintings. Before this could go on too long, he took his hand and began leading him across his house, yelling back to Sam, “Come on, old sport! I’ve got to show you two some things!”

Scrambling to his feet, careful not to slip and fall on the pillows, Sam rushed out of the room so he didn’t lose track of them.

Through the kitchens and Marie Antoinette music rooms and into Restoration salons, he couldn’t help but feel there were people hidden, sleeping, behind every couch and chair they passed by, commanded by Veila not to make a peep this day. They toured the ‘Merton College Library’ as Gabe’s faint laughter from the last party echoed in his head.

Then, they made it into the simplest room of them all. Veila’s room. Really, it was three rooms separated into one large apartment, but he _called_ it his bedroom. Lavender curtains flowed over the windows covering the wall from one side to the other, and the windows overlooked the water.

Cas separated himself from his partner to check out the decor in the room, immediately finding himself with a hairbrush of pure gold in hand. While Dean took a seat beside his neighbor on the plush bed, the blue-eyed man peered through the room, absently twirling the hairbrush before setting it down.

As they sat together, Dean allowed a laugh from deep in his belly to fill the room, and he leaned over so he could whisper to Sam with one hand shading his eyes. “It’s the funniest thing, old sport,” he decided. “I can’t—when I try to—”

Sam’s head tilted to one side, focused only on the man speaking to him and cycling through different emotions. First was unscripted, unprompted joy, which stumbled quickly into embarrassment, and back to his unreasoning joy. But then, his expression changed into something new with his eyes glued to Cas, and it was absolute wonder at his presence that consumed him.

Deciding he probably didn’t need to continue to talk, Sam stood back to his feet and began to wander around the room.

“Do you like it? The house, I mean,” Dean’s voice questioned.

Cas turned on his heels to face him. Tears had stained his soft cheeks once again, and he tried to move closer, he tried to move his lips to speak, but nothing came out. Five lost years struggled on his lips, and all he could do was laugh. He moved closer to his long lost love, then fell onto the bed with his hands covering his eyes as a loud laugh overtook his body, and Dean worried that he’d done something wrong. He worried that he’d wasted his time in his apparent revaluing of every object in his home, based on the reaction it elicited from Castiel.

However, all the worry seemed to leave his face when the man practically crawled into his lap and Sam turned his back. They fell into hushed whispers, and he considered excusing himself to go home at this point, but decided to wander instead to the spiral stairway across the bedroom where framed photographs and newspaper clippings adorned the wall.

Through his own thoughts, he overheard a few particularly excitable whispers from the other room. “If you look there—right out that window there—you can see… well, if there was no mist, you _could_ see your house,” Dean said. “There’s always a green light, right at the end of your dock.”

That must have been what he reached for just the other day when he saw him longing for something on the dock, something just out of reach. Now, however, as Sam looked out of the stairwell and into the bedroom, he saw the contemplative look on Dean’s face. It must have occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever, diminishing his count of enchanted objects by one. At one point, the light had seemed so close, especially compared to the years of distance between them before, but now they sat wrapped up in each other’s arms and the green light had become just another light at the end of a dock.

Sam turned around to walk into the study near the stairs, which was littered in even more photographs in frames. One particular photograph, of a fresh-faced Dean and an older man with a round face and a receding hairline mostly covered by a newsboy cap, caught his attention as it hung above the desk in a golden frame.

“Who’s this?”

“Who’s that?” Dean whispered something in Cas’s ear before standing up to look at the photograph, smiling widely at the sight. “That’s Bobby Singer, old sport. We were old friends, him and I. Well — I was sort of like his protege, if you will.”

Following right behind him, Cas came around the corner and the trio stood in the middle of the study, staring at the old picture of a younger Dean Veila.

“What happened to him? I haven’t heard you mention him before,” Sam asked.

“He’s dead now—most of my old friends are—but he taught me quite a bit before passing on.” A faint smile ghosted over his lips, but his attention turned quickly to a drawer in his desk in the office, and Sam wandered off to give them a little more privacy.

When Castiel and Dean wanted to start sailing out on the Sound, Sam finally found the chance to excuse himself back to his own home, leaving the pair alone to walk through the mansion grounds and sail through the water and do whatever else their hearts desired. _Without_ a third party trailing along aimlessly.


	5. Chapter 5

The warmest weeks of the summer came and went, dragging in their wake a plethora of budding romances, which in turn brought articles with headlines that screamed ‘scandal!’ in regards to these romances. Just a few days after Dean reunited with Castiel, he came to speak with his neighbor in his little cottage, who informed him—with a pale face and wild eyes—that Kelly Kline was expecting another baby with her husband. From everything Sam gathered, Dean wasn’t taking the news particularly well, and he seemed to be drawing away from his lover.

“It's just casual, old sport,” Dean tried to explain through his faux exasperation after a few minutes of Sam asking questions of their dates several nights before, tapping his fingers against the armrest of Sam’s floral sofa. “He's married, you know? Got a son, too. I’m not sure one man alone can change that.

Sam, however, was suspicious. Since when did the most popular man in all of New York doubt himself in such a manner? With a furrow of his brows, he pushed the long hair behind both of his ears then looked at Dean. "So... you mean to tell me that you're going into this with-with no expectations whatsoever?"

"None."

 _Bullshit_. A heavy sigh left Sam's lips. He may not have known this man long, but that was a blatant lie. "Don't you ever think about something?" His eyes shut for a brief moment to find the right words, angling his body in the seat to look at him.  "Maybe... not marriage... but something? Anything. A future, Dean, don't you ever consider it?"

The silence that fell over the car caused the man in question to shift uncomfortably. All of a sudden, the roaring of a car engine clued Sam into the accelerating of Dean's vehicle and he grimaced. Deflection. Of course.

Finally, Dean spoke. “Why would I, old sport? I want it, but - haven't you seen the tabloids? The articles, the press, all the rumors? Who wants to live with somebody that brings such a thing into their home? It's fun. What I have with Castiel is fun, but he won't want a future with me.”

A moment of silence passed before he added, “And he’s got another child on the way. A few months left, I reckon. By the end of the summer, the baby will arrive. I’m the last thing his family needs, you know?”

 _A baby on the way?_ The news came more casually than Sam would have thought possible, and he reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose as if it would help him process the news. That _would_ certainly throw a wrench in their plans, but the couple had been through so much already…

Deciding not to allow the new revelation to phase him, he managed a tight-lipped smile. “Who’s to say? He is risking everything to be with you, is he not? His wife, his son, his unborn child, his home, his name and reputation. I fail to see why he would do such a thing for a silly game of cat-and-mouse.”

“People get bored, old sport. He’s _bored_ with being married, that’s all it is. He told me about the baby that first night together. Didn’t want me getting the wrong idea I reckon.”

The conversation only lasted a few frustrating minutes longer before Dean returned to his home with his shoulders slumped in defeat. Perhaps it was easier for him to think this would be a brief fling, that way he had no chance of getting his heart ripped to shreds again. Perhaps there were moments, even in their first evening together, where Castiel tumbled short of his dreams—not through his own fault, but through the build-up of five years (five years!) worth of ideas. The colossal vitality of his illusion had gone beyond Cas, beyond everything. It would only be natural to shield himself before everything came crashing down.

Obstacle after obstacle continued to tumble towards Dean and Cas, often leaving them scrambling, but they always seemed to land on their feet. Even when every pair of eyes on the street threw nasty looks in their direction and the newspapers on their tables every morning threw slander around like nobody’s business, they persevered. Dean didn’t know how well his partner would handle the gossip and tabloids, or how well his wife would handle them, but through their conversations, they formed a plan for every single unexpected twist life sent their way.

Since tea, Gabriel and Sam went to dinner four separate times—on their own accord!—and lunch twice. They exchanged letters, and it didn’t take long before they ended each one with ‘love, Sam’ or ‘love, Gabe.’ In their free time, they would visit one another in their homes, enjoying private moments.

On the weekends, Sam found himself stumbling into Dean’s parties more often than not, laughing and drinking amongst strangers whose faces he quickly began to recognize. Thankfully, Dean never mentioned the business proposition again after that afternoon before tea—the last thing he wanted to do was to be rude, but he couldn’t ever justify selling himself out in such a horrific manner. Bonds were more than enough for him.

At the end of July, Castiel made plans with his wife to attend one of Dean’s parties—a feat he’d never done before—and they left Jack at home with Kelly’s parents. Sam decided he would attend this party, as well, and Gabriel could never stay away.

“But before the party,” Dean had told his lover, “we’re going to need new suits. To impress everybody.”

So they planned to make a day out of it. A trip down to the city to the tailor, then—if time would allow—a walk through Central Park. Or perhaps a more secluded park would be all right…

One hot afternoon in April, after yet another secret night spent together in Dean’s mansion, they drove through the Valley of Ashes, over the Queensboro Bridge, into the city until they found a place to park. While getting out of the car, Mr. MacLeod happened to be walking by, and he came over to whisper a couple things in his business partner’s ear until the conversation turned entirely audible.

“I don’t _owe_ you anything,” Crowley had hissed under his breath.

“I have evidence and proof of business that suggest otherwise,” Dean spat right back. They stood nose-to-nose in their bitter disagreement, leaving Cas to one side with his arms crossed over his chest.

“I am _nothing_ if not an honest man—”

Dean barked a laugh.

“—and I trust my clients and my employees to work seamlessly with one another. You, Mr. Veila, are included in this.”

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to lose business with somebody who refuses to pay me.”

“You be careful, Veila. I think you underestimate how much you may regret upsetting me and my family.”

“Get on your way now, Crowley.” He turned his back on him, taking two strides closer to Castiel instead. “Wouldn’t want the wrong person to find you sticking your big nose in places it doesn’t belong.”

With a huff and a grunt, then one more glare at his business partner, Crowley began to walk away. “You best watch your back, Squirrel!” He called out one last time before leaving the vicinity.

Then, without a word regarding the angry conversation that just wrapped up, Dean began to walk down the streets of Manhattan with his confused lover.

They made their way into the center of the city, right into Times Square, before he decided to explain a little further. “That was Mr. Crowley MacLeod, a business partner of mine. Usually quite a nice guy, but we’ve had a minute or two to stew in our own emotions lately. He’s nobody to worry about, not as long as you _know_ him.”

Tilting his head to one side and softening his eyes, Cas bit down on the inside of his cheek to think through that a bit further. “As long as you know him?” He repeated cautiously.

“Yes, he’s really no danger to you. Once I sort out our little row, we’ll be quite alright and he’ll be nothing to worry about.”

For a moment, an expression of fear and concern flashed over Cas’s face, perhaps wondering why he would say such a thing if it wouldn’t be an issue, but he submitted to the comments as they continued to walk.

The streets of New York were bustling yet the air between them was quiet as Cas and Dean walked through Times Square that Tuesday morning. While it wasn't a typical outing for such a wealthy couple, but the same routine every day grew boring over time. Waking in a mansion, breakfast in bed, wandering the yards, and sleeping in the same big mansion... it became repetitive, to say the least.

Despite having dozens of colorful, tailored suits in each of their closets, they decided new ones would do them well for the big party where Kelly would meet Dean, and where Dean’s associates would meet Cas. Rather than having a butler bring something new to them, they decided to take a day to themselves for the task. A burnt orange suit would flatter Castiel's undertones, and lavender would fit Dean's.

They walked through the crowded streets in a comfortable silence, only speaking up when it came time to turn a corner and directions were needed. When the store finally came into reach, Dean opened the door for him then followed the man inside. "Our appointments are at eleven this morning, so we'll have to wait a few minutes," Dean explained in a whisper then straightened his suit at once.

The tailor turned the corner at the sound of the bells on the door just as Castiel's arm snaked around Dean's waist. His mouth opened slightly in preparation to speak, lips lingering close to his ear, but the sound of the tailor clearing his throat stopped him in his tracks.

"Cas..." Dean sent a pointed glance at his casual partner. "We've spoken of this. Personal space in public places."

Castiel clenched his jaw but took two steps away. “I struggle to see the point of this rule. The world has already caught wind of our... as you call it, our ‘ _situation’_ ,” he raised his fingers to use air quotes, “as noted by the headlines with our names, claiming 'scandal' every time.” His sharp words turned icy with his cold tone, which had Dean biting the inside of his cheek.

“We are not discussing this here,” he whispered then offered a smile to the impatient tailor standing just feet away with a look of disgust on his face. “Eleven o'clock appointments for Veila and Kline, please. Thank you, sir. Our suits should be in the back, and we simply need them tailored.”

Just one hour later, the couple had seemingly forgotten their brief kerfuffle, and they were leaving the tailor’s shop with smiles on their faces and a promise that their new suits would be entirely tailored to their bodies, ready by Thursday evening, right in time for the party.

Leaving the store at lunchtime had them running into crowds much bigger than what they’d seen before entering at a quarter to eleven, but they were more than happy to stand closer to one another to prevent losing each other in the crowds.

“Where do you think we should go?” Dean wondered aloud, glancing over his shoulder to check on his partner.

Castiel hummed under his breath in thought. “Would you care to go to lunch? I know a few places, and perhaps we’ll wander off towards a secluded park somewhere afterward…”

“I’m not hungry, but I don’t mind stopping somewhere if you need a bite.”

“How about we skip right to the park, then? I’m not particularly hungry, either.” After a beat passed, he added, “And let’s talk when we get there.”

A hesitant nod braced his head as he checked the nearby street signs to orient himself, then Dean began to lead them on their way a few blocks north to Central Park. As they neared the park, the chatter and bustling of the hundreds of people surrounding them began to quiet down, and it wasn’t long before they were somewhere secluded enough that Cas felt comfortable enough to reach over to grab Dean’s hand.

Much to his surprise, however, he moved his hand away quickly, before Cas could get a grasp on his hand, and continued to walk until he found a seat beneath the shade of a willow tree. Cas sat down right beside him, trying again to reach over and hold his hand.

“Stop,” Dean said suddenly, setting both of his hands in his lap. “We’re in… we can’t, Castiel.”

“What do you mean we can’t?” Leaning back against the tree with his legs out straight, Cas stared blankly at his lover. “In just four days, you plan on taking me to one of your parties for all of New York State to see. Yet you can’t hold my hand in a hidden corner of Central Park?”

“I’m…” He pursed his lips. “I’m taking you to the party as my friend.”

Within a half of a second, his face had turned bright red, raging with disbelief. “As your _friend?_ ”

“I thought you—”

“I didn’t realize we were only friends. When did I get downgraded? It must have been after this morning, when I woke up naked in your bed with you in my arms.”

“Cas, that isn’t what I meant—”

“Oh! Then please, tell me what you _did_ mean!”

Dean hesitated a moment to say another word—even to open his mouth once again—because he knew every single word he said would have to be chosen with the utmost caution. Finally, after sitting with a dumb look on his face as Cas’s blue eyes bore into his soul, he said carefully, “Your wife will be there, Castiel… your pregnant wife. I hardly think it is right to take you from her, to show off to the world that you’re in a new, taboo relationship now.”

“Don’t you think that’s my decision to make? She’s _my_ wife, it’s _my_ baby. The only part about this that is yours is the party, which we so kindly accepted your invitation to.”

“I won’t be having you away from your wife while she is with child. She needs your support far more than I do, you know? For now, we are friends.”

The harsh words cut through Cas’s thick outer shell and he began to tear up, though he fought hard to keep himself contained.  

“Only friends, huh?” He echoed through an uncertain voice. “This isn’t… Dean, this is hardly how friends behave. They don’t—” Cas ran his fingers from his hairline to the nape of his neck then squeezed for a moment. “Friends don’t hold hands. In my experience, they also do not make a habit of kissing or falling into bed with one another. No matter the family situation back home, I’ve never considered someone with whom I sleep to be _only_ my friend.”

When Dean’s fingertips grazed over his lover’s arm, Cas yanked back with a sharp inhale.

“ _No._ You don’t get to say we are only friends then do that,” he hissed, attempting—with shaky confidence—to maintain his facade of bitterness.

The silence that fell between them only lasted a few seconds but the iciness hanging in the air made it feel endless.

When Cas’s gaze focused on a speck of dust resting on his burgundy slacks, his jaw clenched and unclenched at the effort he required to avoid making eye contact. Those green eyes turned him into a love-struck fool without fail. So he sat, ignoring every instinct in his body, focusing his intent gaze on the minuscule imperfection on his otherwise perfect ensemble.

“Cas…” Dean’s raspy voice started, but the other man didn’t look up from his lap once. “Cas, you know what I meant.”

Forcefully reaching up to shove a tear off of his otherwise-dry face, Cas tightened his jaw but released his teeth’s grip on his tongue. “No, Dean,” he finally answered in a strained voice. “I don’t know what you meant. You keep trying to say you didn’t mean what you said, yet every time you explain, it gets worse.”

“You know that I love you—”

“So does my wife.”

“—and _I_ would never be unfaithful towards you. You, Castiel…” He reached over his own body to try to touch his cheek, but the other man yanked away again, focusing his intense gaze on the burgundy pants once more. “ _You_ are the only thing I care about. You and your little family. All right? I-I can’t lose you, but I’m not going to ruin your family to show you off for one little night. We need a-a conversation. A plan. How will we continue this—what we have here—without ruining the lives of your children?”

“I still don’t think any of that is your decision to make…”

“Let me finish. I want to spend my life with you, but I don’t want to ruin your chances of a relationship with your children. You know I absolutely adore Jack, and I wouldn’t ever forgive myself if I were the one to prevent you _or myself_ from ever seeing him again. So, I think, it’s best if we forego labeling our current relationship, and on Saturday… I am taking you, Kelly, Sam, and Gabe to my party as friends.”

For a moment, Cas continued to stare at his lap, rolling a piece of grass between his fingertips. But when he finally looked up, he had a faint smile on his lips, and he slowly nodded. Dean reached over one last time to brush his tears from his cheeks, succeeding this time, then pulled his head closer with his grip on his jaw. With their foreheads pressed together, Dean’s nose nudged Cas’s on the side, and his green eyes fluttered shut when two rough hands found a resting place on his jaw. A second later, with his lips parted, Dean leaned in to kiss him on the lips, gently and tenderly.

Within a few seconds, Cas had readjusted his positioning on the grass so his body was facing Dean’s entirely, and it only took another moment before their legs were tangled together with their lips locked. The kiss lingered for a few more beats of their racing hearts, then they parted but made no attempt to move away from one another.

Brushing his thumb against the gentle stubble on his jaw, Dean exhaled slowly, fluttering his green eyes open halfway to look into Cas’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Cas tilted his head to one side, letting their noses nudge together momentarily, before he allowed their eyes to meet in silence. There was a fire dancing in Dean’s eyes, full of passion and love and hope and warmth, and he wanted to fuel it further. So, not wasting another moment, he lunged forward once more to kiss him, this time with fervor and intensity not present only a few minutes before.

They continued on like this, wrapped up in one another from head to toe, until Cas fell backward onto the ground and pulled Dean with him, laughing out sharply. Before either had the chance to speak, however, Dean’s legs were straddling his lover on either side and his head fell in the crook of his neck to litter his skin in gentle little kisses.

“I love you,” Cas whispered breathlessly, gripping the back of the green-eyed man’s suit jacket as his back arched off the ground.

Grinning against his skin, holding his hands on his waist, Dean responded, “I love you.” Then, he decided to move his lips away — seeing as they were still in a public place — and laid his head against his chest instead.

“I want to go someplace with you.” He angled his head upwards to look at the man he was lying on top of. “Someplace that we are accepted.”

As soon as he spoke, he was able to feel the sinking of Cas’s chest as he exhaled a sigh, causing him to frown in response.

“I don’t know where a place like that exists, Dean,” Cas admitted.

“I do. In Harlem, and in Staten Island, and sometimes in Times Square as well.”

This piqued his curiosity. “Tell me more.”

“There are shows every night — not always in the same place, so we have to look — and they are filled with men and women rather like us. They are safe places, so long as we approach it right.”

“And what might be the ‘right way’ to approach these shows…?”

“As a member of the community.”

“As opposed to…”

“Wealthy, upper-class men.”

Cas frowned, holding his arms around the waist of the man still laying across his body. “But that’s who we are.”

“I know, I understand. However… the wealthy people, those who don’t identify with this community, have their own private booths and boxes up high to see these events, and it separates them — not accidentally — from the performers. Sitting with the other wealthy people will likely only expose us to unfiltered judgment.”

A small, almost inaudible ‘hmm’ came from his lips as he combed over the thought in his head, fingers running up and down his lover’s spine gently, lips pressing into the top of his head for just a second. Then, a realization smacked him square in the back. “They’re going to know who we are, aren’t they? With the headlines. No matter what we do, how cautiously we go about this, we will be known by the people we see.”

“Yes. I don’t believe that there is a way around it, as much as I might like there to be.”

“Can I… let me think about it. I don’t need my wife learning of my whereabouts through the news like that, so this may need to wait until _after_ I am able to have a discussion about our relationship with her.”

“I understand.” He paused. “How do you reckon she’ll respond? To learning of your relationship?”

While running his fingers through Dean’s spiked up hair, sighing on instinct, he stared up at the bright blue sky and the puffy white clouds floating above them. Though this wasn’t his first time considering the thought, he often cut off his curiosity from wandering too far, perhaps because he feared what the answer may be. However, Kelly wasn’t a wrathful or short-tempered woman by any means. She may have been a bit traditional, but with the way he was raised, Cas should have been too, and he couldn’t rule out her having an open mind…

Shaking his head a bit, removing his eyes from the clouds in the sky, he leaned down to kiss the top of Dean’s head lovingly. “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “I genuinely believe she will be understanding, at least to a certain degree. And I won’t… well, I won’t be insisting on a divorce when I first mention it, but she certainly wouldn’t be too upset if we were to divorce. She and her lover could continue without shame after that.”

“Is a divorce truly what you want?”

In abrupt response to this comment, Cas pulled him further up on his chest before rolling onto one side so they were face to face on their sides, holding his chin up with two fingers to maintain eye contact. “I have waited, Dean,” he whispered. “For five long years. I have waited for you, for your return, for five years now, and I am so sick of waiting.”

Laughing out under his breath as he cupped the other man’s face, a grin spread across his cheeks — finally blissful beyond belief — Dean kissed him. Quick and gentle, but impassioned enough to show his love, then he pulled away. “But… what about your son? And the unborn child?”

“Kelly is a reasonable woman. I didn’t marry her for nothing, and I can’t see her barring me from seeing our children. Even through her affairs and my new rumors and tabloid headlines, we are closer in our friendship now than ever before. I think we are better off without being romantically involved, and it is no secret to either of us.”

“Think about it.”

“You know I will. I won’t make any rash decisions, not regarding anything as important to me as my family. But, Dean, remember that you, too, are considered my family. I care for you quite a lot, and you are going to have a large impact on whether I leave my wife.” Leaning closer to kiss him quickly on the cheek, he added on, “And you will be the first to know my decision. Then, we can plan accordingly.”

Dean nodded in response, then hesitantly wiggled himself out of Castiel’s arms to stand up. Cas followed quickly behind, resting his hands on his shoulders until Dean spun him around to smack the grass off of his navy blue pants.

Arching his back in surprise, he yelped before laughing out. “Dean, what do you think you are doing?” He scolded playfully.

With two more firm smacks on his ass, a smirk on his face, Dean spun Cas back around then turned so his backside was facing him. “You had grass on your ass. I probably do too, but you need to check.”

Even without facing him, he could hear Cas’s eye roll behind him, but he obliged and carefully removed all the loose green grass from his pants until both men looked tidy enough to leave their secluded little area. They only wandered the cramped streets of Manhattan for a few minutes before heading back towards the car and ducking inside to spend the rest of the afternoon in the privacy of Dean’s home.

At eleven o’clock in the morning on that Wednesday, as the sun stood brightly at attention in the sky, Sam peeked his head outside — not just to see the blooming flowers littering the yards of his home and the other homes around him, but also to check if his neighbor ended up coming home the previous night. Dean had vaguely told him of his plans to get a suit tailored for the party alongside Cas, but he’d been taken home for a few hours by his own lover before he had the chance to ask about their date.

As he craned his neck out the front door, trying his best to see into the garage around the corner where the bright yellow car was typically stored. When he noticed it was present, he marched across the grounds separating them, straight to the iron gates that kept Veila’s home private.

“Sam Winchester,” he introduced himself briefly to the guards at the door. “Can I head on in to speak with Mr. Veila? I have important matters I would like to discuss with him, though he isn’t expecting me right now—”

As if on cue, Dean came out of the house right as he claimed he wasn’t expecting him, calling out, “Good afternoon, old sport!” And he waved his hand while showing that bright smile that radiated warmth even from fifty feet away.

“Hello, Dean!” Sam called back in response, stepping through the gate when the guards opened them for him. “I wanted to ask you about last night and how it went. Well, I hope?”

Taking him by the arm, he started to lead him towards the house with a thoughtful look on his face, clearly contemplating what exactly happened. “It did go well. We had a few bumps and blips, but nothing we couldn’t sort out in just a couple minutes. Very informative in our conversations, and we made progress in our relationship, as well!”

With one eyebrow raised, he mused, “Bumps and blips?”

“Well, yes. Nothing major, just some issues in the way we handled situations and the way in which we wanted to progress our relationship further.” Dean seemed to have caught a glimpse of his car while they walked, because he quickly changed the topic. “Let’s go to lunch. It will be my treat, and we can enjoy a meal together.”

Blinking a few times slowly to get a grasp on how that conversation progressed in such a way, Sam looked at him and could barely keep his amusement under wraps. “Lunch. All right, I believe I can spare a few hours of my day.”

“Wonderful!” Not hesitating for even a breath, he yanked the blue tarp from over top of the car to reveal the entirety of the nearly neon monstrosity.

Before another minute passed, they were in the car on the road to town.

“What are you thinking for food, old sport?” Dean yelled over the noise of the engine and the wind blowing in their ears.

Feeling rather impartial, he merely shrugged his shoulders and responded, “Take your pick. Whatever your favorite place is, we can visit. Especially since it’s your treat.”

Even through his focused gaze on the winding and curving roads leading them out of West Egg, Dean was clearly thrilled by this new development and couldn’t bring himself to stop smiling. “I know just the place, then! A nice little diner near Times Square. A few blocks south-east of it, actually, and their selection is delectable. I am not a picky eater but I will only eat their cherry pie, because I have never in my thirty years tasted a pie as remarkable as theirs.”

With his bottom lip popped out just a little and an amused expression lining each of his features — from his eyebrows to his cheeks to his lips — Sam let himself chuckle underneath his breath, brushing some dark hair out of his eyes. “The pie?” He echoed.

“The pie! It’s the best pie you will ever eat, if you haven’t eaten it already. Absolutely wonderful, all right? Hold me to it! It’s a promise.”

“I’ll be sure to hold you to it, Dean. I’m sure it’s delicious.” With another laugh and the corners of his eyes squeezed up as he smiled, Sam turned his attention back to the horizon of passing trees, which faded to piles of garbage and scraps by the time they reached the Valley of Ashes just moments later. The car sped right through the desolate valley between towns, approaching the Queensboro Bridge once more. As usual, the car only came to a lower speed when the traffic increased and he ran the risk of smashing the front end of his precious Baby by driving too fast.

Perhaps ten minutes later, they pulled into the parking lot of a newly built diner with a fresh coat of paint on the sides of the building and a new sign to announce their name and signature dishes, which were a milkshake, steaks, and pie.

“This is my go-to location for meeting business partners, if you would believe that!” Dean suddenly announced, laughing out sharply from his chest while locking the doors to his car. “We spend quite a bit of time rummaging through the menu, then while they cook our food, we talk about our business plan. I’ve met countless partners here for the first time, and it’s only a bonus that the food is wonderful.”

They took one more look at the building before them, and Dean’s eyes wandered to the parking lot before sparking with something Sam had never seen in him before. It mimicked the mischief he _had_ seen before, but there was something else, and he was scrambling through the doors before Sam even had the chance to check.

After he pushed through the heavy doors, nearly slamming them on the man behind him, he shouted out an instinctive apology then said, “I have to make a phone call! I won’t be too long, but I need to borrow their telephone.” Without so much as a glance back in his direction, Dean ran off and left his friend alone in the doorway of this diner, staring at his surroundings with wide eyes.

Unsure of what he was supposed to do, Sam took a few steps away from the door with his eyes carefully focused on the tables around him rather than the people filling those tables. When his scanning eyes finally found an empty table near a window, positioned towards the kitchen by the back of the restaurant, he put his head down and walked straight to it before anybody else could take the seat. There was nothing special about the metal table except that it was empty, and that was more than good enough for him.

After sitting down in the hard chair at the table, he turned his attention down to the menu right in front of him on the table. Along with the classic American foods, there were some Italian dishes as well as Mexican, though Sam just decided on a steak.

Since Sam didn’t expect to know anybody in a Manhattan restaurant, he kept to himself entirely while Dean was gone. At least, until the sound of a throat clearing pulled him away from staring blankly at the menu, and he looked up to see his friend’s business acquaintance, Crowley — if he remembered the name right.

“Mr. MacLeod!” Sam exclaimed in surprise, resting his right hand over his chest, far more taken aback by his presence than he would have expected. Just a few minutes before, Dean _did_ say that he met many of his business partners there and made many-a-deals in the restaurant. It shouldn’t have been _that_ surprising to see the only partner that he even knew about, but he wasn’t going to beat himself up over the startle.

Crowley, resting one of his hands on the taller man’s shoulder and the other on the table, laughed in a manner that struck him as odd. “Where’s Mr. Veila? You came here with him, didn’t you?” He demanded.

“Well…” Furrowing his eyebrows in confusion, he nodded just a little. “Yes, I did come with him. We’ve come for lunch — a treat on him. He ran off to make a phone call just a minute ago, presumably to Cas. He hardly speaks to anybody else these days.”

“And you.”

“And me. But he hasn’t a reason to be calling me!”

Nodding his head, Crowley took a seat across from Sam and propped his arms on the table. “I can wait here for him. Thank you for the seat.”

Since he didn’t quite know what he could do about the man invading his personal space without his permission, but conversation didn’t exactly flow easily between them — a fact he learned the moment Mr. MacLeod attempted to call him by the nickname of ‘Moose’ — he decided simply to sit with his fingers tapping against the table. The sound rung out more than it would have had the table been made of wood, and this seemed to annoy Crowley. At least, if his side glances and grumbles underneath his breath were anything to speak by.

Much to his relief, Dean returned only a couple minutes later with a broad smile on his face and greeted Crowley with a slap on the back. “What are you doing here?”

Obviously unamused, he straightened his suit jacket. “I have lunch here every Wednesday,” he pointed out as if it were the most obvious answer in the world.

“Ah-! Of course. I can’t believe I forgot!” Dean continued to grin, taking his own seat on the chair between Sam and Crowley. “You remember Mr. Winchester, I presume? He’s having a sprightly time with Gabriel lately, did you know?”

Darting his eyes from one man to the other, Sam began to tap his feet on the ground instead of his fingers, watching curiously to see how the conversation played out. His cheeks were flushed a deep shade of red at the remarks — like he cared what Crowley thought of him.

“I hadn’t a clue,” Crowley said, then ordered a burger when a waitress came to the table.

Dean had to center himself mentally to avoid mentioning the fact that _this was not his table_ but, once he did, he beamed over at him and said, “Well! I’m sure he’d tell you all about it if you asked.”

“Oh — no, no, that’s all right,” Sam said.

Crowley, raising both of his eyebrows and inclining his head forward a few degrees in an amused manner, took a sip of the previously untouched glass of water sitting in front of Dean. “Do you have another delivery for me, Mr. Veila?”

“Not quite yet. Soon, though.” He offered a reassuring smile, though it had no obvious effect on the man at which it was aimed.

“That’s a pity. You know my expectations, and you need to meet them if you wish to continue our arrangement.”

“Yes. I am well aware of your expectations, as I know you are of mine.”

At this point, Sam melted into the background with a glass of lemonade in his hand, desperately looking anywhere but the arguing pair before him.

“I expect my delivery by the end of the week, Mr. Veila, or you will not like the consequences.”

Dean’s tongue pressed against the back of his teeth and he tried to show a smile to his business partner, though even Sam could tell it was forced. “Very well, then. You know that I am a man of my word, yes?” Inclining his head as though he expected a response from him, he paused. “Friday evening, I will have some of my men deliver to your preferred location. Then we will be set?”

A smirk — one that was filled with pride — crossed Crowley’s lips, who puffed up his chest like a bird who finally found a mate, then he pushed his chair away from the table with an ear-piercing squeal. He buttoned his suit jacket with his back straighter than before, looking at least an inch taller than typical, and took one final sip of his water from the table. “We will be set. I hope you have your plans all the way sorted for this weekend, and I hope I won’t have to see you again for at least another day.”

After sending a taunting wink back at the boys, he turned around and strode back to his table from before they came in, leaving them alone to talk.

Sam wasted no time in jumping the gun and trying to figure out what he had just witnessed, demanding, “What are you delivering?”

Dean’s eyes widened, and he looked up at him in shock, like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “Nothing, old sport. It’s not a big deal.”

 _Well, it sure sounded like one!_ Releasing a frustrated sigh, he ran his fingers through his hair. Right as he opened his mouth to call him out on his lying and bullshit, he was interrupted by the man who apparently knew he wasn’t such a great liar.

“All right, would you like the truth?” Dean asked. “I’ll tell it to you. Now — listen close, lean in towards me.”

He did.

“I don’t speak much of my job. _Any_ of the various jobs that my time is spent fulfilling. And I consider you to be my friend. That’s why I feel as though I should be honest with you about who I am and what I do. The truth is, I—”

Before he had the chance to start, the front doors to the establishment slammed open, swinging until they smacked against the wall hard enough to leave dents from the handles. In stormed a small team of police officers. None of them bothered trying to hide their weapons in arms, and they appeared to be on a mission.

From behind the counter, a middle-aged man asked if there was anything he could help them with. The officers marched in without a word.

“Fergus Crowley MacLeod,” one of them announced, his voice booming through the building far louder than necessary. The cop who spoke looked around the room to figure out which face looked the same as the ‘Wanted’ posters they had printed out of his face from sketch artist renders. The short, stocky man sitting at the booth in the farthest corner stuck out to him, so the group of officers marched to that small and secluded area.

The officers to either side of the leading cop had their guns drawn and at the ready as they drew nearer to Crowley. The crowd of diners parted without so much as a look in their direction, and the dead-silence quickly collapsed into a collection of murmurs and hushed whispers of gossip in each other’s ears.

Everything moved much faster than Sam could keep his attention on. From the cops moving from the doors to the back of the room to the table where Crowley sat, he struggled to keep his attention on whatever happened to be happening at the time. His green eyes darted back and forth.

One second, the officers were drawing their guns. The next, Crowley had his arms behind his back and an officer was cuffing him. Suddenly, a streak of blood smeared over the cop’s face. He’d been punched, and now there were three officers chasing after him to ensure that he would not get away. Next thing Sam knew, the head officer tackled Crowley to the ground, pinning his arms above his head while another cuffed him, and then they were gone. As quickly as they’d come in and wrecked things up, they were gone with their culprit.

Wide-eyed and confused, Sam stared over at Dean, who hardly looked less confused than him.

“What — those were police officers.” Sam gaped.

“They were,” Dean said, nodding in confirmation while taking a sip of his new glass of water.

“What is—”

“He’s not a man who should be walking the streets.”

Sam furrowed his eyebrows. “Seemed mostly all right to me, if just a bit off.”

“Well, you don’t know him as a business partner. You don’t know him like I do, and I should hope you never do.” With a dismissive wave of his hand, the subject took a 360. “Now, I wanted to tell you a little about myself before we were interrupted. Sam, I want you to know that everything I’ve done, all of my businesses and business deals, have been done in the name of love. All right? Tell me you understand before I continue on.”

Part of him wanted to stop Dean right there before he told him more that he desperately did not need to know, things that could get him into trouble somehow, but he gave in. “I understand, Dean. Is-is all of this—” He motioned to the chaos still surrounding them. “—about the same thing? Is this all connected to you?”

“I am one connection, you could say so. Look here, old sport, I knew I loved Castiel from the moment I first saw him. But I knew things wouldn’t work out between us. Well, some things — some very sad things — happened to me, before and during the war, and I had to find my own way into his heart. I got into some businesses that I would perhaps be better off without, you see? My main business is selling drinks to folks that I trust and meet through referrals. Crowley — he _provides_ many of my referrals. He’s…” Dean leaned in as close to Sam as he could to continue in a whisper. “He’s the kingpin of the mob, you see, and his mother helps out. They’re always doing things they shouldn’t be, and Mr. MacLeod… you see, he owes me thousands of dollars at this time.”

With his eyebrows furrowed in concentration as he listened to the man explain their connections, the pieces started to fall into place and his confused expression turned more concerned than before. He had lots of questions, but started with the most simple. “By drinks, you mean… what we had last time we went to a meal?”

“Yes.”

“And… you sell them? In bulk?”

“Oh, yes. I am a… _supplier_. And I’ve always got room for more help, if you’re ever curious.”

“Ah-!” Sam’s cheeks flushed a bright red color. “I-I’ll pass. It hardly seems safe, not for someone like me, especially if _that_ is who you are working with.”

“I understand. It can be rather intimidating, especially at first. Just remember that the offer is open, and it will remain open for as long as we are close.”

“I appreciate it, truly.” Shifting uncomfortably in his seat, he reached over the table to pull his plated steak right in front of him, making it far easier to eat and avoid making eye contact with Dean. Before he could even consider continuing their discussion, he definitely had to process all of this new information to the best of his ability, working through each detail in his mind.

A few things added up now that he knew more, but he still felt as if he knew almost nothing about Dean Veila. When speaking about his life, he either ignored the relevant parts, or it all sounded fake, and Sam didn’t know what exactly he could believe when this man spoke to him. But this time, he knew he was being honest with him when he told him about this illegal business.

After Sam rejected the business proposal for what felt like the millionth time, he stabbed at his tender steak on the plate, bringing a small piece up to his lips. The previously bustling and busy air of the diner had calmed down and finally, the tension present when the cops nearly raided the place had dissipated. Unfortunately, neither men at the table knew how to speak to one another through the unresolved tension between _them_ and them alone. So they sat, eating their own lunches quietly, occasionally glancing up at each other to see if either planned on speaking up.

When one of them finally opened their mouths to talk, Dean eased into a conversation about the date he had with Cas on the previous day. Soon, they were back to talking excitedly with one another about their boyfriends, the bootlegging conversation long forgotten and ignored. Or, at least stowed for later, seeing as Sam had no reasonable clue how to approach such a topic but it didn’t seem reasonable to drop a topic like that for good.

Sam wondered for just a moment if Castiel knew of his secret lover’s business, of his side gigs, but that was frankly none of his business. Hopefully he found out sooner rather than later. Maybe before he chose to leave his wife, as Dean explained they discussed that night.

It only took a few more minutes of conversation about Gabe and Cas for them to run out of things to speak about, since it seemed they already told each other everything, and when that happened, Dean paid the check then lead Sam out of the restaurant. By the time they arrived in West Egg, they decided to part ways so Sam could work on reading for his job and Dean could make a few calls to ensure everything would be in order for the party on Friday.


	6. Chapter 6

The Saturday evening of the party came in the blink of an eye. That Thursday, just as planned, Dean took Cas back to the tailor to retrieve their exquisitely fitted suits, though he didn’t keep him away from home for too long this time around. When the guests began arriving at his home around five o’clock on Saturday evening, he stood on the balcony above his entryway with curved staircases on either side, hands on the rail, waiting for  _ his _ company to arrive. 

His fingers dragged along the gold-coated bar while a pack of muscles shifted beneath his lavender suit jacket. His personal guests planned to arrive at six thirty, so he had time to spare, but he hadn’t the slightest clue what to  _ do _ in that spare time.

Deciding it would be courteous of him to greet some of his guests, he left the balcony to mingle before a butler called him away to make a phone call to Chicago. He mumbled an inaudible, “Thank goodness,” under his breath as he excused himself from a rowdy crowd of people berating him about Mr. MacLeod’s arrest. News spread quickly of it, and enough people knew that the pair were close that they thought he would have answers. Nobody cared that he was sick of giving those answers.

Just as his phone call with his associates in Chicago ended, the clock struck six twenty-five in the evening. Dean inhaled then buttoned his jacket and left to the circle drive out front where he expected to meet with his crew.

A few people passed him by on their way inside while he waited outside, but nobody so much as looked twice at him. Few people made the connection that  _ he _ hosted these parties and owned this home, though it was probably for the better that people didn’t know. He’d overheard people say plenty of nasty things about who he could be, and many iterations of what type of monster he  _ must _ be. 

When a familiar voice called his name and a tall shadow brooded over him, Dean ripped his mind away to focus instead on his friend. “Good evening, old sport!” He exclaimed. “I’m thrilled that you made it!”

“Well…” Sam laughed. “I have hardly missed a party since my first night here. And this-this is a big night for you, Dean. I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time, and I wanted to support you.” 

“You’re a good friend, you know that?” 

He shook his head with the same laugh as before, shoving his hands in the pockets of the forest green suit draped over his body. 

Before they had the chance to fall into conversation, a familiar white car pulled up to the front of the house and Gabriel came out of the passenger’s side. The driver left without hesitation, and Sam greeted his boyfriend with a quick kiss to the lips. 

“You’re looking quite dapper tonight,” Gabe said. “Green is a wonderful color on you; your eyes look striking.” 

Sam’s cheeks turned three shades redder than a tomato. “And you look dashing in blue, darling.” 

Sending a wink in Sam’s direction, Gabe took a couple steps closer to greet Dean with a brief hug, smacking his shoulder twice before pulling away. “It’s brilliant to see you with a smile on your face, Dean. Amazing the progress we’ve made, huh?” 

“Things have gone spectacularly, I admit. I could never have imagined them going so well, and I’m lucky to have a support system like the two of you right behind me,” Dean said with a closed-lip smile, squeezing Sam’s shoulder. 

“You couldn’t have done it without me,” Gabe responded smugly, nudging his side with his elbow.

Right as Dean began to roll his eyes at the remark, a new black car with darkened windows rolled around the corner, pulling right up to the small group standing on the porch. First, an impeccably dressed driver came out of the driver’s side, then opened the back seat. Castiel — clad in his burnt orange suit that framed his broad shoulders and muscular arms wonderfully — stepped out of the car. He quickly turned around to offer his arm to Kelly, who came out of the car, holding her swollen stomach. 

Her dress must have been custom fit for her bump because, while Dean knew next to nothing about maternity clothes, something told him that she would be hard-pressed to find a silk dress covered in glass teardrop details and a silk bow that tied at the very top of her maternity bump in any department store. The dress draped perfectly over the bulging of her stomach, and she looked magnificent. As she fluttered her long eyelashes and smiled a bright white smile at Dean, radiating in the reflected light from his home, he could see what Cas saw in her when they married. 

“Mrs. Kline,” Dean said under his breath, offering a similarly blinding smile to her. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I didn’t know if you would make it, considering your circumstances, but I’m ecstatic you came.” 

A nod braced her head briefly and she released her husband’s arm to support her stomach with both hands. “I’ve spent much of my time lately at home. Since I’m no longer ill every time I merely  _ consider  _ eating, I figured I should get out of the house for a minute or two before the baby is born.”

“When is the child due?” Dean glanced over at Cas expectantly for an answer, raising both of his eyebrows, and Kelly did the same, though she was probably curious as to whether he knew quite that much about the pregnancy. 

“Oh—me?” Cas’s cheeks flushed slightly, but he quickly thought through the question in his mind. “Any time now, isn’t that right? I expect by the end of the month.” 

A scoff came immediately from Kelly, who hooked one of her arms around her husband’s. “It had better be by the end of the month! I love this child, but I’m exhausted of being sick on his or her behalf.” 

“How exciting,” Dean murmured then began walking towards the front doors to enter his home again. “There is quite a lot I can show you guys, if you are interested in seeing my home. I believe Gabe and Sam have already seen what there is to see, but I don’t believe Kelly nor Cas have been to any of my parties.” 

Both Kelly and Cas let their eyes wander about the large room in which they entered, though he only cared to follow the blue eyes to make sure everything was to his liking. After all, he had thrown the very first party and every one after that for him, in the hopes of finding him and impressing him. Now he could show off everything he’d worked so hard for.

Suddenly, Kelly’s unimpressed voice carried through the noise of the crowd. “It’s just a party. How much could there be to see?” 

Dean had to fight to stay unaffected. “My home has quite a lot to explore, but you are free to stay where you are if you’re uninterested. I can find a sofa for you to sit upon if you should tire out, which I feel may be helpful for you?” 

She stayed stiff in her posture, though her features softened at the idea and she adjusted her grip on her bump. “I suppose that might be a rather decent idea. This child takes an unfortunate amount of my energy, far more than Jack ever did.” 

“Very well. I can have the room adjusted to your comfort, should you end up needing it,” he offered, leading the group up a curved flight of stairs to the same balcony he stood at the edge of earlier that evening. Instead of standing in one place when they got there, however, they wandered quickly down the winding halls, past a couple housekeepers who were searching for rooms to dust and tidy. 

Once they found the third door on the right side of the hallway, Dean opened the door and motioned his friends inside the large room with a silk-covered bed against one wall and a brand new sofa sitting in front of a fireplace. “Here we are. If you find yourself needing to rest or take a break, feel free to do so in here, and if anything is not quite how you’d like it, ask a maid for assistance. They will be more than happy to help you out.” 

For just a moment longer, she looked around the room, giving the couch a quick comfort test, then thanked him quietly before turning to follow them out of the room. 

The laughter and shouts of the drunken party-goers became audible as they neared the main room once again. Wandering down the stairs and through the crowds, occasionally glancing over his shoulder to check on Cas, Dean found a small area near the bar facing the dance floor where they could all sit. 

With an eagerness in his eyes, Cas sat at the very front, as close to the dance floor as possible, and draped his arm over the back of the chair in front of him while watching people dance through the room. Right behind him, Sam, Kelly, and Gabe sat on a bench, and the latter two introduced themselves to one another. 

“So, what’s his deal, anyway?” Kelly asked in what she must have thought to be a whisper, though Dean could still hear her as he stood between the two rows. “How did he come across so much money? I’d bet it’s something illegal, like everybody else with  _ new money _ . It’s how they accumulate it, you know?” 

“Mr. Veila?” Gabe asked. “He owns some drug stores, and they’ve become exceedingly successful.”

“I heard one of his business partners got arrested just the other day.” 

Cas spun around with a frustrated huff to peer at his wife. “Why don’t you give him a chance, darlin’? He’s hardly got control over how his associates behave, and if they’ve dunked their toes into illegal behaviors or habits.” 

The instant he spoke to her, all the tension seemed to leave her body and her expression softened. That glow from before became radiant once more, and she reached forward to grab his hand. “All right, darling. If you trust him so much, I’ll keep myself open.”

Clearing his throat, reasserting his presence in the midst of this entire conversation, Dean stared down at them with narrowed eyes. He allowed his fingertips to graze over the shoulder of Cas’s suit, tracing small shapes on his back that flexed and danced beneath his touch. 

“Kelly, would you mind?” He asked, motioning towards the dance floor while holding his hand firmly on his shoulder. 

Maintaining a momentary facade of disinterest, she nodded halfway, fiddling with the ends of the oversized bow over her stomach. “Of course not. I think I can keep myself amused,” she said then stood up from her seat. She took one step closer to Cas, who had also stood up just moments before, and smiled up at him. “Be smart,” she whispered in his ear, looking fondly at him.

And Dean saw the way Kelly looked at him. The longing, the love, the nostalgia for memories past, the hope for their future. For a moment, he wondered if he stood a chance. They shared something years ago, made the sparks explode into flames, into entire forest fires, but now things were different.  _ They _ were different. 

As Kelly leaned in to kiss Castiel on the corner of his lips, an unfamiliar pain shot through his body, consuming Dean from head to toe. 

_ Jealousy. _

The breath quivered when he inhaled and his lungs started an earthquake. Reaching for a slick bottle settled on the nearby bar, he poured himself a shot of vodka and threw it back with a grimace. The burn lasted but a second, but the relief took its time to kick in.

Clearly concerned, Cas reached over to set a hand on Dean’s shoulder. “Are you okay?” He asked. 

Coughing and sputtering for just a second, he finally nodded. “Yes. Let’s go, shall we?” 

As soon as they left Kelly’s presence, Dean managed to relax and the jealousy wiped away, entirely engrossed in the man holding onto his arm. 

Dean felt his heart pounding in his chest as he took Cas onto the dance floor with their arms locked. While Kelly didn't seem to mind, he could feel her sharp glare piercing the back of his skull while they moved through the hoards of people to find a spot near the middle of the dance floor, one of Castiel's hands holding firmly onto Dean's arm to avoid losing him in the crowd. 

People started to fixate on them. Dean heard the blood pulsing through his veins as Cas rested a hand on his shoulder. People began to whisper. But Dean realized he didn't care. 

As if to throw a big middle finger to the judgmental eyes and murmurs surrounding them, Dean stepped even closer to the blue-eyed man before him with one hand resting on the small of his back and the other interlocking with Castiel's free hand. Castiel used his thumb to gently rub the tension out of the place where Dean's shoulder met his neck, and he found himself relaxing immensely at this action while leading him in a slow dance.

The music faded out from Dean's focus when he decided to focus solely on the man in front of him, raising their arms over their heads and spinning him in a gentle twirl before tugging him back. They were standing chest-to-chest, swaying from one side to the other.

"Was all of this made entirely from your own imagination?" Cas whispered in a tone so tender, so loving and innocent, that it sent a chill down Dean's spine. 

A small hum of thought left his lips as he considered his answer, never letting his eyes leave Cas’s. "No," he finally answered firmly yet gently. "See, you were there all along. Every idea... Every decision." 

His words lingered in the air for another moment before he leaned in close, letting his jaw rest against Cas’s cheek while his lips hovered just centimeters away from his ear. The feeling of his hot breath down his neck made Cas gasp. "Of course, if anything is not to your liking, I'll change it." 

Cas had to take a moment to compose himself so he didn't melt entirely under his touch. Finally, when he managed to bring himself to a proper state of mind and felt confident he could speak, he did so in a low, gravelly whisper. “It's perfect... from your perfect,  _ irresistible _ imagination."

Dean’s grip on his back instantly tightened and his dull nails would have dug into his skin if it weren’t for the many layers of his orange suit. Tightening and relaxing his jaw a few times, he hesitated to move his lips away from the exposed, open neck that beckoned him closer. If he had it his way, he would duck his head in the crook of his neck to litter his skin in kisses and bruises, but such behavior would not be welcome in the middle of his dance floor. So, with his lips pulling away from Cas’s addictive skin, he took a step backwards and raised his arm above their heads to rotate him out in a twirl. 

As he spun out, Cas threw his head back laughing, filling Dean’s heart with warmth. When he twirled back in, he ended up with his back pressed against Dean’s chest, who buried his face in the crook of his neck just long enough to kiss the base of his neck. 

“Let me show you the gardens,” he whispered, hot breath beating against his skin. 

“I’ve already seen the gardens,” Cas said. A confused frown covered his face as he turned to stand face-to-face with him, dropping a hand to rest on his waist. 

Dean chortled. “Let me try this again…” His hand slipped around to sit on the small of his back. “I’m going to show you the gardens, which are nearly deserted during parties.” 

Realization struck him all at once and the color drained from his face. He threw a glance over his shoulder back towards the bar, only to find that his wife had wandered off and Gabe and Sam were off doing  _ their _ own thing. With bright eyes shining in the artificial lights, Cas nodded once. That was all the agreement Dean needed to grab him by the hand and pull him through the maze of dancing individuals, couples, and groups. 

Both of their laughs filled the air, joy overtaking them when they ran away from the prying eyes of the guests. Dean unlocked a miniature gate that would take them out towards the hedges, greenhouses, gardens, and more, and as soon as he did, Cas released his hand and ran ahead of him, off towards the tree separating Sam’s yard from Dean’s. 

It didn’t take long for him to disappear off into the distance as Dean followed slowly behind, watching with love every move he made. Watching every unique way his body moved: The way his shoulders moved up and down as he laughed out from the belly, the way his hand ran through his hair before resting on the nape of his neck, the way he threw his head over his shoulder to make sure his lover followed him.

Dean wanted to call to him, but he didn’t know what to say. Instead, he settled for chasing after him at a leisurely pace. Just as they began to approach the oversized tree hanging over much of his yard, Cas disappeared behind it, his fingertips the only part of his body left visible as they danced against the trunk,  _ beckoning  _ him to come closer. 

For a moment, he caught a glimpse of those blue eyes once again, and he laughed. 

“The moonlight… God, it makes you glow,” Dean whispered as he slowly approached the willow tree hiding in his backyard, pacing himself. His heart raced in his chest, the sound echoing in his mind, and he watched. Watched for Castiel to make another appearance. Watched for his eyes to twinkle in the moon’s light. Watched for the sake of falling in love once more. “You’re absolutely radiant.” 

Another moment passed before a familiar hand began to trail along the trunk of the large tree. Dean’s breath hitched in his throat. Then, he saw his feet drag along the grass beneath them. Ever so slowly, the man made his way around to the front of the tree, taking Dean’s breath away with each movement. When Cas’s face finally came around the large trunk, he looked utterly innocent. His eyes twinkled as he bathed in the moonlight, skin glowing more than the orange tuxedo on his body. 

Dean wasted no time to step closer to Cas, who now stood with his back against the tree. At that moment, he remembered every reason he fell in love with this man. However, he needed nothing more than the way he looked at him to set his heart ablaze.

For just a moment, with one arm wrapped around his lover’s waist and the hand pressed into the small of his back, Dean stared at him. If he didn’t drink in everything about this moment now, he would regret it for years to come. So he did. He noticed the way Castiel’s body curved and melted into his touch; he noticed the way his eyes stared up at him with a longing for a love lost long ago; he noticed the way their breathing synced and hearts pounded. Amongst other things, he noticed the way he smelled: Like champagne and peaches. As his other hand moved up to cup the side of his face, he noticed the warmth of the soft skin beneath his touch.

Then, when the time was right, he kissed him. With every passionate fiber in his body, he pulled Cas’s face closer to his own and poured all of his emotions into one kiss. Every bit of love he had felt for him since they first met went into this embrace and Cas’s knees buckled under the passion.

Pulling away for only a brief moment, Dean decided to drag his lips down his face, littering a trail of kisses down his cheek, chin, jaw, until he finally landed on his neck. His face buried in the perfect curve of his neck, nipping and kissing the heavenly skin. One of Castiel’s hands moved up to grip the hair on the nape of Dean’s neck and his head fell back against the tree to savor the moment. 

“I’m leaving her,” Castiel breathed out, though it sounded more like a moan than a whisper. 

Dean halted. “You’re…” He turned his gaze up so their eyes met. “You’re leaving your wife?” 

“I am.” 

“For me?” 

“Well, it’s certainly not for Sam.”

An intense joy overtook Dean at once and he laughed out gleefully, launching forward to kiss the man once again. “We’re going to live here, and we’re going to raise Jack to be a wonderful young man, and the new baby, as well,” he whispered when the short kiss broke.

Instead of agreeing, however, Castiel pursed his lips together in a grim look. “I do not know how custody of Jack will be decided, Dean. I… I’m leaving my pregnant wife for a man. That is not—I have no control over the court system. You  _ must _ understand this. But if we have a clean divorce, Kelly will allow us to help with Jack and our other child.” 

“They-they are as much your children as they are hers, Cas.” 

“I don’t get to make that decision. We can’t have it all, but I’ll be damned if I’m not going to try.” Castiel brought one of his hands up to meet Dean’s and laced their fingers together, giving it a gentle squeeze. “You and me, we’ll be all right. I promise.”

Taking a moment to stare at their hands blankly, bringing the hands up to his lips after a moment to press his swollen lips against, Dean allowed a small nod to brace his head. “We’ll be all right,” he repeated. “I hope we will. You are all that I have wanted for years, and—”

“Mr. Veila! They need you inside right  **_now_ ** . The butlers have asked me to find you. It’s Mr. MacLeod, he’s back and he is  _ not _ thrilled with you,” Sam’s voice called out, stringing all of his words together as he quivered and stared at the couple with wild, wide eyes. “He’s making quite the scene.”

Before Cas even had the chance to wonder what was happening, Dean yanked away, mumbling apologies to him under his breath, and scrambled back towards the inside of his house. “I’ll be back!” He yelled over his shoulder to his lonely lover, jumping over the short gate and sprinting in the doors. 

Immediately, he saw a quarrel at the base of the stairs. From afar, it appeared to be between Crowley and Arthur Ketch, one of his other business partners, and as he moved closer, he realized Mick Davies and Kevin Tran were also in the middle of this shouting match. 

“Boys, boys!” Dean yelled over the noise, stepping right in the middle of the group with both of his hands up in the air. “There’s no reason to fight. What seems to be the issue?” 

The instant he finished uttering those words, Crowley grabbed him by the tie and swung his fist. It made solid contact with his cheek and half of his nose. Blood began to flow down his face, but he simply stumbled back and straightened his suit to compose himself. 

“You had better hope,” Crowley growled, tightening his grip on the tie around his neck, “that I don’t find your family. I  _ know _ who you care about, and I know who you really are. Your mother and father may be dead, but I know there is much more to you. You — you’re going to bloody well pay for what you’ve done.” 

Dean wiped the blood from his face with the dark-colored handkerchief in his breast pocket. “I’m not sure what you  _ think _ I’ve done, Crowley, but I assure you that I mean you no harm.” 

“I know you were the one to call the police. What are the odds, do you think? You show up to the diner with your little pet moose in tow, and you promise my delivery for Friday, then you play all nonchalant when I’m put in cuffs?” 

“I had no idea what was happening.” 

Crowley roared with laughter. “You take me for an idiot, but  _ you _ and your family will pay, Dennis.” 

Lunging forward to grip his jaw in his right hand, using the other to hold his collar, rage building up in his chest as he stared into his eyes, Dean growled, “That’s not my name.” His tongue pressed against his teeth. “You will never lay a hand on my family. Try as you might, I will keep them safe. Every last one of them until the day I die.”

“I know more about you than you ever wanted me to. As I said, I know who you are, even if you seem to have forgotten. You want a new life, and I will make sure you  _ never _ get it. So go ahead, protect the ones you love. Go into hiding with your boy toy and your little neighbor, but  _ I know how to hurt you _ . You will never be safe from us again, and we will never kill  _ you _ , because we want to watch you suffer,” he said, redness filling his plump face as a vein in his forehead popped out. “No one in the history of torture has been tortured with torture like the torture you’ll be tortured with.” 

Without so much as another glance at Dean, Crowley brushed himself off and marched away, leaving the party at once. 


	7. Chapter 7

After Crowley stormed out of the party, the shouting and laughter from the crowds died down into hushed whispers as the party-goers shared their theories on what happened between Mr. MacLeod and the group of men he challenged to fight. It didn’t take long for the guests to begin wandering out of the house just as they did every weekend, drunkenly driving off to wherever they came from.

By the next Saturday, the buzzing and bustling about the disagreement had yet to cease. Somebody found out the man who had his nose broken by Mr. MacLeod was actually the mysterious and infamous host of the parties, Mr. Veila, and the rest of the world seemed to catch wind of this not long later. Everybody had their own ideas on what Mr. Veila was up to that lead him to that point, and only one other person had the answer. But even Sam didn’t know the whole story. Nobody other than Mr. Veila himself did.

With much hesitation and fear, and plenty of convincing from his only two friends, Dean opened his doors one more time for the public to gorge themselves on his generous servings of liquor and hors d’oeuvres. The same guests as normal attended, and he kept to himself more than usual to avoid the prying and judgmental eyes that were sure to find him. He only left his office when two brisk knocks on his door and a short conversation with the butler told him that both Cas and Sam had shown up once again. While it was a welcome surprise, he didn’t know why they’d chosen to come to the party after all the chaos that followed the previous week’s events. Nonetheless, he greeted his special guests appropriately: With a shake of Sam’s hand and a kiss to Cas’s cheek.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you tonight, old sport!” Dean called out while slapping Sam on the right shoulder.

“We thought you could use the support! The week has had more gossip than usual, if I’ve read the papers right, and we know how the party ended last week…” Sam glanced over at his cousin who had his lips pursed together in a thin smile.

For a moment, Dean seemed a bit uneasy at the reminder of the events with Crowley, but he played it off well with a bright laugh. “Well! I’m happy you two came, you know what a delight it always is to see you. Especially at a party of my own,” he said, placing one hand on each of their shoulders to guide them inside the party. “Did Kelly stay home with Jack?”

“She did. As the birth approaches, she has felt a bit more sick than usual, so she wanted to rest with Jack. It’s some of the last time alone they’ll have before the baby comes,” Cas answered.

“I certainly hope she gets to feeling better soon.”

Cas laughed. “Hopefully once the baby arrives, she will be less ill. But she insisted I come tonight — she’s worried about you, darling. And she wants me to send you her love, says that she can’t wait to see you again.”

Something in Dean seemed to ease at these words. He must have been more worried about Kelly liking him than he initially thought, because his relief came from hearing that she did want to see him again. Of course, he never expected his lover’s wife to take much of a liking to him, making this exciting news to him.

“When you arrive home, tell her not to worry. I’ve heard such rumors and seen tasteless tabloids for years now, they hardly phase me any longer.” Suddenly, Dean grabbed Cas’s hand and looked into his eyes with love in his own expression. “You know me, and that is all that matters.”

Sam, clearing his throat, reminded the couple of his presence so they didn’t get too engrossed in one another that they forgot their surroundings. That certainly wouldn’t help the tabloids.

“How are you, Sam?” Dean released his lover’s hand, taking a seat on a sofa that Sam would have sworn wasn’t there just a week ago.

“Me? I’m good. So is Gabe,” Sam answered shortly, positioning himself on the new loveseat to the left of the couch.

The new seats sat right in front of the barrier on the balcony overlooking the main floor where the guests danced and drank and laughed and sang. It was secluded enough, positioned around the corner from the staircases to keep it out of the way, and when Dean had his movers placed it and two others just like it, that seemed like the only logical place. He wanted somewhere inconspicuous to watch his party thrive, somewhere that a thousand people wouldn’t be surrounding him at any given time. Somewhere he could be both within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.

With his arm propped against the back of the sofa, Dean settled in with his spine erect, head level to look out at the crowds, chest puffed with pride. Cas sat beside him, leaving not an inch of space between their thighs, leaning back with his knees apart and his head against his shoulder.

“So what is it like?” Sam asked. “Knowing all of these people know your name, and they’ve come to your parties in spite of whatever they may have heard about you, or about us?”

Dean had to pause to consider his answer. “They don’t come in spite of the rumors, old sport. That is the reason they come, you see? Nobody wants to know everything about anyone, and especially not the man providing their illegal alcohol. The more elusive I stay, the better.”

While Sam contemplated that, Dean looked down to find Cas staring up at him with wide eyes blown with admiration and love, completely lost in the freckles littering his face. A pale pink flush immediately rushed to his freckled cheeks, but he leaned down to press a kiss to his forehead and he hooked his arm around his shoulder to pull him even closer.

For a few minutes, the trio sat in silence — and they were the only silent ones amongst the hundreds of guests within the home. They were comfortable in their quiet, though, and felt no need to fill the space with awkward, tasteless conversation.

As the orchestra transitioned into a new and more upbeat piece of music, Dean found himself clearing his throat and looking over at the seat to his left. “Sam! I’ve been meaning to ask. How is your dog?”

“Riot?” Sam whipped his head around.

“If that’s his name.”

“It is. He’s doing well. Still has a mind of his own; I caught him running through your yard just the other day, but he always comes back.”

“I’m glad to hear it, old sport! He’s more than welcome to come over any time, you know? So long as he keeps himself outside. I’m sure he enjoys having space to run.”

“Ah! Well, thank you. We will most certainly keep that in mind.”

As if he’d just performed an entirely selfless and life-changing favor, Dean began to beam with pride.

A butler approached their group with a tray of drinks in his hand, though only the two guests took cocktails; Dean prided himself on his near abstinence from alcohol, which began when he entered the bootlegging business three years prior. It would hardly do his business any good to sample his own stock.

Once the butler left them to their own devices, the three fell into a comfortable and casual conversation, bouncing from topic to topic as it seemed fit. From potential baby names to the divorce, all the way to stories about the secrets of the most notorious people Mr. Veila had worked for in his time, they found themselves engrossed in one another for several hours.

By the time the vibrant colors of the sunset had faded to black and the clock read 9:30 P.M., Cas offered his goodbyes to Sam and Dean so he could return home to his wife and spend a few minutes with her as he promised, should she still be awake.  
“I promised I would be home by ten o’clock,” he had explained in a frantic panic as soon as he saw the time. “The _least_ I could do is help her to bed and make certain she has all she needs.”

As hard as he tried, Dean couldn’t understand why the well-paid maids and butlers couldn’t do all that, but he shrugged it off and kissed him quickly before he left in a hurry. In the blink of an eye, Cas was out of sight, and Dean turned to look at his neighbor with a newly bright expression on his face.

“Well, it would appear it is only us now, old sport! How would you like a fireworks show? Haven’t had one of those tonight, have we?” He stood abruptly from the couch and marched down the stairs without a glance back at Sam, leaving him alone on the sofa. It wasn’t long before the sound of heavy footsteps followed behind Dean, and he smiled upon realizing he followed him.

“Mr. Shurley,” Dean whispered in the ear of the short orchestral conductor in a red tuxedo. “Prepare the orchestra for the climax of the show. Thirty minutes.”

Stepping closer as soon as he heard the whisper of the familiar last name, Sam tilted his head to the side in a confused manner. “Did you say Shurley?”

“I did.” Dean furrowed his eyebrows together, struggling to find the source of the confusion.

“Any relation to the Mr. Shurley that I know?”

“Him? Oh, yes! This is — ah, well it’s hardly my place to say…”

“To say what?”

“Well, old sport, this here is Chuck Shurley, world-famous composer. Actually, I manage to snag him as my conductor every few weeks; he’s rather good at what he does and doesn’t mind taking a tad bit of time out of his day.”

“But _who_ is he?”

“Right! He’s actually the father of Mr. Gabriel Shurley.”

At the sound of his son’s name, Chuck whipped his head around, though he continued to conduct his orchestra half-heartedly. “Do you know Gabriel, Mr…?”

“Winchester,” Sam said quickly. “But Sam is fine with me. And I do happen to—”

“Oh!” He said suddenly. “ _You’re_ Sam Winchester.” Then, he took his attention entirely away from his orchestra — who continued to play beautifully — to look at the man in better detail. “You’re larger than I expected.”

Squinting his eyes and knitting his eyebrows together, Sam cocked his head to one side and looked at the short man with disheveled curly hair and an immaculately fitting suit. Dean briefly wondered if he had been upset by the comment, though Chuck showed no such concern.

After a few seconds of standing silently in absolute befuddlement, Sam spoke up. “I’m… larger? Than you expected?” He asked, flabbergasted.

“Much.”

“I’m not that tall. Not really.”

“Well-! It’s more than your height — which _is_ monstrous, by the way. But you have the shoulders of a bear. You’re… _broad_.”

Sam pursed his lips together as he looked down at his body. “You expected me to be small, then?”

“I did! Sort of like… I don’t know, like a dog. Yeah, quite like a medium-sized dog. Not too small—taller than my son, to be certain—but not…” Chuck motioned his baton up and down Sam’s body. “Not this tall.”

“I don’t think my height or… _breadth_ … particularly matters, Mr. Shurley.”

“You’re right! You are absolutely correct. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sam. How did you meet Gabriel? I’ve heard a bit about you two, but my damn kid has never told me the story.”

“We met at my cousin’s house, actually. Mr. Castiel Kline?”

“Did you? Ha!”

After a beat of silence where Mr. Shurley didn’t speak again, he quirked an eyebrow in his direction. “What’s so funny?”

“I used to be a… parental figure, of sorts, in Castiel’s life. Our families were close, but I didn’t realize you were his cousin. In any case, I imagine you will be seeing my son sooner than me, so tell Gabriel he should ring me sometime.”

“Huh. I wonder why my family never told me about you lot,” he wondered under his breath before shaking his head. “I will, sir. And I’ll make sure he does. Call you, I mean. I’ll- I’ll make sure he calls you.” With his cheeks a deep shade of maroon, he nodded briefly to the man who looked as if he just rolled out of bed, then walked away to catch up with Dean.

By the time he reached his host, Dean was standing halfway up the stairs, whispering into the ear of a butler and laughing with him. To get his attention, Sam tapped his shoulder.

Without looking back, he held up one of his fingers and said, “Hold on, old sport.”

He did. He looked out over the crowd below them, wondering what other interesting people with interesting stories were in that room that he had yet to meet, then looked back at Dean as he finally turned around to address him.

“I was just talking with my butler. I have a phone call to take, all right? If you don’t mind. I’m sure it won’t take much of my time.” One of Dean’s hands came to rest on Sam’s shoulder, and the light of the party briefly reflected off a crevice of his black and silver ring engraved with his initials right into the taller man’s eyes, causing him to squint for a moment.

When he blinked the shining light out of his eyes, he offered a smile to him in response. “Of course I don’t mind. Do what you need to do. I’ll be near the pool to watch the rest of the show.”

Before he scampered away, he showed him a blindingly bright smile that assured him his priority was returning to his friend and the party, filling his chest with a warmth and gratitude for his friendship. Then, once he disappeared from view, Sam made his way back down the stairs towards the center of the party, grabbing an electric blue cocktail on the way.

The crowds around him continued to gossip and whisper about their pointless little secrets, convinced somebody would use the information about Miss Bradbury’s romantic escapades against them. As if anybody had the energy for such pettiness, when they could gossip about Mr. Veila instead! Sam scoffed to himself but offered Miss Bradbury a smile before parking himself in a spot between the staircase and the pool. He stood amongst strangers that all seemed to know his name, but he didn’t let his discomfort show.

A young woman with curly blonde hair that stopped at her waist and a thick accent from the northern mid-west nudged his side with a grin on her face. “We’re about to see the best part, no? Get out of your head and watch!”

Furrowing his eyebrows in confusion, Sam looked down at her. “I’m watching,” he insisted to the stranger.

“Sure ya are.” The woman rolled her eyes but the ear-to-ear smile never left her face. “I guarantee you will quite enjoy yourself if you stop looking around the room. You haven’t even had a sip of your drink, though.”

“My — oh, this?” Sam looked down at the cocktail. “I’m not thirsty.”

“Suit yourself.” With that, the blonde had her attention turned back on the orchestra and the dancers on the stage in front of them.

Sam decided to take a couple of sips from his cocktail glass then set it on a tray as a butler collecting glasses passed by. Taking a cue from the rest of the audience, who’d started to settle — if only a little — he looked up at the orchestra with his hands shoved in his pockets.

The music began to swell to fill the mansion, though Sam’s anxious eyes wandered the room only to find Dean racing down the stairs. Urgency filled his every step and panic was evident on his wide-eyed face when he made it up to Sam. The cellos and violins grew more intense, crescendoing and speeding up in preparation for their big hit.

“That was Castiel!” Dean cried out desperately. “It’s urgent, old sport. It’s—he got home, you see? But Kelly and Jack are gone, as are the maids, and—”

Chuck threw his arms high into the air then the fireworks exploded behind them and the cymbals from the orchestra crashed with the large bass drum.

“Cas found a molar cufflink.”

All the color drained from Sam’s face in an instant. “We’re going over there _._ ”

Dean nodded one time then called a butler over to bring his driver outside immediately. Without a glance at guests staring in awe at the light show in the sky, the two rushed outside and to the garage that held the yellow car. Sure enough, his personal driver was waiting with the keys already in the ignition, so Dean thanked him before literally jumping into the driver’s seat. Sam stumbled over the door into the passenger’s seat and, before they could even consider settling into the car, they were flying down the driveway and onto the road.

“What do you think he’s going to do with them?” Sam finally asked, exchanging a worried glance with his friend.

Dean stayed silent for a minute, drumming his fingers and left foot to a rhythm only he could hear, chewing on the inside of his cheek. When he bit hard enough for the metallic bitterness of blood to escape into his mouth, he finally swallowed the lump in his throat and spoke with a quivering voice.  “I… I don’t know, old sport. I don’t know what we are going to do, or what we _can_ do. I knew that one day this job, this life I chose… it would catch up to me. But not like this. Never like this.”

As the trees and mansions sped past them, he saw Sam’s eyebrows furrow out of the corner of his own eyes. Then, he asked the question he’d been dreading to answer since June. “How much does Castiel know?”

Dean’s stomach dropped and his foot pressed further down on the gas, nearly causing Sam’s hat to fly off his head before he grabbed hold of the brim. “He doesn’t. He… there is a lot about me, old sport, that you don’t know, all right? That nobody knows. Nobody living, that is. I keep it a very good secret, you must know this, and it isn’t for no reason either.”

“Does he know who Crowley is, Dean?” He demanded.

“Well… you see, it’s hardly that simple—”

“It is exactly that simple! Does he know Crowley is your business partner and kingpin of the mob?”

Hanging his head down in shame as much as he could while driving, he answered, “He has no clue.”

Sam pressed the thumb and the knuckle of his second finger against either side of his nose. “This is bad, Dean. This is very bad.”

“You think I don’t know that?!”

“I don’t know, do you?! You’re the one who thought it a good idea to piss off such powerful people. Ones that you work with, might I add!”

“I made a mistake,” Dean said through gritted teeth.

“And now Jack, Kelly, and the unborn child may die for it.”

“ _I know_. I know how bad this is. I have seen what Crowley can do, I know what he is capable of far better than you know.”

“Then what are you going to do about it?”

As the car screeched around a corner far faster than it should have, Dean ran his fingers through his hair. “I am going to make a phone call.”

Sam scoffed. “A phone call? To who, the police? You’ll get every last one of us arrested — and for all we know, _he’s working with the police_. How do you think he got out of jail?”

“Would you mind allowing me to finish, old sport?” Though he tried to keep his voice level, he clenched his jaw and every consonant came out harder than he meant. When Sam stayed silent for the next few seconds, Dean took a deep breath. “His mother, Rowena, will know where to find him. They don’t have a good relationship, not since his father died and Crowley took over the mob, practically kicking his mother to the curb. She’s still a part of the mob, of course, but even his son, Gavin, holds more swing in decision making than Rowena.”

“Why would a mother give up her son’s location?”

The car pulled up to the familiar Georgian Colonial mansion and came to a screeching halt, throwing both men forward in their seats for but a moment. “There is nobody in the world quite like Rowena.” Without another word on the subject, Dean leapt out of the car and rushed inside the front doors of the house, leaving Sam to scramble behind him.

“Cas! Cas, where is your telephone?” He shouted out through the long and open corridors when he pushed through the front doors. Much to his surprise, the corridors were empty, every staff member typically lining the halls and guarding the doors missing entirely. “Cas, where is your staff?”

A few moments passed before a response echoed down the hall. “What the hell is going on, Dean?” Finally, Cas’s brooding frame turned around the corner, jaw tight and dark eyes narrow. “You hung up on me without any context, and you clearly know something I don’t. So I’ll give you exactly thirty seconds to explain what is going on before I kick you out.”

“I’ll explain after I make a phone call. Now, where is your phone?” Dean avoided letting their eyes meet in any way he could, pushing past him and looking into the rooms on either side of the hallway.

“No, you won’t!” He shouted, but Dean continued searching for the phone. Instead of yelling pointlessly, Cas gripped his shoulder firmly, pinching the muscles between his fingers, and forced him to turn around and look. “My pregnant wife and my son have disappeared and you seem to know what happened. They are my entire life, my family, and I will not hesitate to kick you to the curb and move far, far away with them if your answer doesn’t please me.”

Dean jerked his shoulder back to try to remove it from his grip, rather unsuccessfully, and bit down on his tongue with his jaw clenched. “If I don’t make this phone call now, I fear it may be too late. I will explain afterwards, Castiel, so I can guarantee your family stays alive.” The grip on his shoulder loosened and he finally jerked away. “Got it? Now. Where is your god damned telephone?”

While his jaw didn’t loosen and his shoulders didn’t relax, Cas walked down the long corridor into one of the rooms with the telephone — the same one in which he’d argued with Kelly just months before about Mr. Rooney. He pursed his lips but waved in the direction of the telephone.

“Thank you, Cas,” Dean whispered then pulled a sheet of paper out of his breast pocket, dialing the number on it as quickly as he could. It immediately began to ring its metallic shriek, and he waited impatiently for the answer that came only four rings later. “Ms. MacLeod? It’s Mr. Dean Veila, a business partner of your son’s—”

“I don’t want anything to do with whatever Fergus has gotten himself wrapped up in,” a woman’s thick Scottish accent interrupted him sharply.

“Listen, Ms. MacLeod—”

“The least you could do is call me Rowena. I’m not _that_ old.”

“ _Rowena_ , your son has kidnapped a couple people who are very important to me. One is a woman who is due with a child any day now.” Dean glanced over his shoulder at Cas for confirmation. “And her son, as well, who is three years old. I need to know where Crow— _Fergus_ —would have taken them.”

This time, she hesitated before answering, and the way her words slowed down made her sound a bit unsure. “Why should I help you?”

“Because you are the only person that _can_ help us. Your son has gone off the deep end. He shouldn’t even be out of jail right now, but you guys clearly have connections to the police so they can’t help me. To steal a pregnant mother and her son right out from under the husband’s nose is truly cold.”

There was a silence that hung in the air between them. She seemed to be considering the words, weighing her options in the pressing situation at hand. Surely she knew how horrible she would seem if she refused to help, and if anybody in New York cared about their reputation, it was Ms. MacLeod. As Dean stood in waiting for her voice, his fingers drummed on the table the telephone sat on, chewing on the inside of his lip.

Finally, her voice rang through the phone. “I’ll help. _If_ you help me out. You help me and I’ll help you, yes?”

“Whatever you want, Rowena.”

“I can give you Fergus’s location, that is no problem. In exchange, I expect to take his place. Make sure _I_ am the kingpin, not Gavin or any other man with some distant relation to my family.”

His eyebrows raised as if she could see. The only way the role of kingpin would move to somebody else in the family would be if Crowley died. Likely if one of them _killed_ him. The thought settled in his stomach and made his head spin, but he swallowed the lump in his throat best he could.

It would seem that she could sense his nerves over the phone, so she added, “That’s the only way you will get them from Fergus, Mr. Veila. Prison won’t hold him, dearie, and he won’t be happy to see you. Make sure you go to the building well-equipped.”

Blowing a puff of air out of his cheeks, Dean nodded his head. “All right, Rowena. I have the equipment necessary in my car. I’ll take care of it, and you’ll take his role until your dying day. My word is good. Now, what is the address?”

Clearly proud of herself, Rowena enthusiastically gave him an address located in the middle of the Valley of Ashes and specified a few extra directions in case he got lost. He copied these down onto a sheet of paper, then thanked her and hung up the phone. Once he hung up, he didn’t have time to walk out of the room before Cas was demanding an explanation from him once again.

“Let’s get in the car,” Dean suggested then looked over at Sam. “Are you joining us, old sport?”

Raising both of his eyebrows, Sam looked back at him and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I take it I don’t particularly have a choice?”

He laughed in response. “You always have a choice, but the more people we have, the better. Make a decision fast, though. Keep in mind that I don’t have a way for you to get home if you don’t come with us.”

Releasing a heavy sigh, slouching his shoulders forward in defeat, Sam nodded and said, “I suppose I’ll be joining you, then. Let’s make quick work of the situation, though. I don’t trust Mr. MacLeod.”

As the three walked out of the red and white mansion to the bright yellow car parked outside, Cas asked, “Who is this Mr. MacLeod you keep speaking of and why does he have my wife and child? How do you know him? And why did you call his mother?”

Dean opened the driver’s side door in his car to duck inside, watching out of the side of his eye as Sam and Cas squeezed into the rest of the front seat. Once they settled in the car and the doors shut, he began to drive. “Mr. MacLeod is a business partner of mine, you see? He was. He’s a gambler, and he’s the man who fixed the 1919 World Series. His name is Crowley, though he was born Fergus, and he’s… well, you see, he runs the mob in New York City, all right?”

“The mob?” Cas stared blankly at him. “What do they want with my family? What does _he_ want with them?”

“It’s… it isn’t so much a specific attack on you, Castiel. I—” Dean paused for a moment, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. “I should start from the beginning, shouldn’t I?”

“I would suggest it.”

“Well… my real name isn’t Dean Veila, and I don’t come from old money. I was born to a poor couple — Mary and John Vale — in South Dakota, and I bore the name Dennis Vale. We lived on a farm, and I worked every morning from dawn to dusk. Milking cows and goats, shearing sheep, sowing the soil, doing whatever needed to be done. I hated it. It was not what I wanted for my life.

“I was four years old, almost five, when my mother died. There was a fire in the home, and my father and I barely made it out alive. But life continued, even without her. We woke up every morning — no matter how difficult — and tended to the crops and the animals and the home. When I was aged seventeen, I left home wearing proudly the name Dean Veila.”

With a nervous glance away from the road, he clenched and unclenched his jaw, trying to read the expressions of the men beside him. Castiel’s expression seemed blank, his blue eyes narrow but relaxed, staring out at the long road outstretched before them without blinking. Sam, on the other hand, had his eyebrows furrowed together so they nearly met above his nose, his lips pressed away from his face in the slightest, clearly a bit unsure about the situation. A heavy sigh left Dean’s lips and he continued.

“It was a very sad situation. Thirteen years later, I was still mourning my mother, and I wanted to make her proud in everything that I achieved. She always told me—” He laughed fondly. “—to continue reaching for the stars, that the sky would never be my limit, that I was never alone. So every day, when I felt alone away from home, I remembered those words. I remembered how she assured me that she was always with me, and… she told me there were angels watching over me. I don’t know if I believe it, but I have been very fortunate in my life.

“Anyway. After leaving home, I spent some time sailing. I had learned when I was younger, though rarely had the chance to practice. One day, a storm — a very bad storm — hit me on the ocean, and I found myself lost, cold, and barely able to keep my boat afloat. A man in his yacht found me and rescued me. This man taught me everything I needed to know about being proper and wealthy, about being an acceptable member of society. Bobby Singer was his name, and he helped me out for over a year. But tragedy… you see, tragedy follows everywhere I go. Bobby Singer passed away and it was a very sad day. I was expected to receive half of his inheritance, he showed me the papers and everything, but it never happened. Some distant cousin of a cousin claimed the money as his own and found a flaw in the Will. I never received a dime from his inheritance.”

The wind blew through his hair as the car flew down the empty roads, passing by the familiar mansions of West Egg lit up in the distance. He stayed silent for a little while longer, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, staring at the road without any discernible feelings in his eyes.

“How did you get the money?” Sam’s voice pulled Dean out of his own head, causing him to shake his head and throw a sideways glance at him.

Considering how stunned Cas looked beside him, he was hesitant to continue on and tell him that he got them into this mess with rather illegal activities, but he promised an explanation so he released a heavy sigh and continued. “After Bobby Singer died, I was drafted into the war. It was horrible in every thinkable way. The things I saw… the people I lost…”

Hesitantly, he started to explain his experiences from the Great War. As much as he wanted to avoid thinking about the experiences, it felt pertinent that they knew. After all, he met Castiel for the first time during a break between deployments, and he owed him an explanation as to why he never returned. So he told them about France and Germany and how he became a commander of his own battalion, and he told them about the horrors he saw every corner he turned. He opened up slowly about the worst horror he faced, about the death of his closest friend that he knew he was responsible for.

Dean explained how he couldn’t have counted the number of people who died under his command. From 1917 to 1918, he saw at least half a dozen soldiers in his own battalion die weekly and he couldn’t help blaming himself. The bloodshed and the screams haunted him into the present day, into 1922. He saw thousands of starving women and children, no more than skin and bone, whose husbands and fathers were either off at war or dead. This wasn’t the life Dean imagined for himself. When his right-hand man died from a combat wound, Lieutenant Commander Dennis Vale couldn’t bear the pain. It happened towards the end of the war in the midst of the Second Battle of Marne, the place he despised going back to most, where thousands upon thousands of soldiers from both sides of the war died.

Over and over for the following years, he played Benny’s death in his head. He should have yelled for him to move, or acted quicker the moment he was shot… Maybe then, he could have survived. Dennis should have done _something_ to prevent the fatal shot to his chest. Instead, he was clutching a letter from Castiel in his fist, tight to his chest, watching his troops settle themselves on the front lines. For just a moment, his and Benny’s eyes met and Dennis smiled. Then came the echo of the gunshot, and blood came flowing down his olive fatigues from the hole in his chest as his knees buckled under his weight. Dean remembered crying out in shock. He fired back in response, completely neglecting to tend to his fallen friend until he was certain the culprit had died. By the time he stepped over to Benny, it was too late.  
After a year of fighting together, Benny died because of Dennis. He died because of Dean. After such an event, he couldn’t bring himself to return to Castiel, not through his mourning and remorse.

By the time he finished the story, Cas had moved one of his hands away from his lap to rest on Dean’s knee, offering a reassuring squeeze to him and a small smile, though still not looking away from the road. Dean took a minute to compose himself once again, grimacing from the reminder of the suffering the war caused everybody.

After passing a couple streets to one side, he continued on to explain how he stumbled upon a man named Mr. Crowley MacLeod as he grieved, and he took him under his wing. With the promise of more money than he could ever know what to do with, he leapt eagerly into the quite illegal business of bootlegging. From the beginning, he felt immense hesitation to dive deep into the world of illegal businesses, but as the money began rolling in, he couldn’t help himself.

The parties came soon after he refurbished the mansion he bought right across the bay from Cas, and it was months before he finally met somebody who knew the name Castiel Kline.

Several grueling minutes later, he finally finished explaining the story all the way up to the phone call with Rowena. He noticed that Cas’s hand had left his knee at some point, but he didn’t acknowledge this for fear of upsetting him further. The tension in the air hung so tight that he felt it might snap if he moved an inch, so he stayed perfectly still except when he had to turn the steering wheel or move his foot.

Sam and Dean both sat silently, waiting for Cas to say something, _hoping_ he would say something so they wouldn’t have to.

It took until they passed into the Valley of Ashes for anybody to open their mouths, and when he did, the suddenness took the others by surprise.

“Why should I trust you to help my family?” Cas asked slowly, careful when choosing each of his words.

That was fair. After all the lies he’d told them, Dean couldn’t blame him for not wanting to trust him. Exhaling, he glanced to the side at him. “Because I’ve risked it all for you, Cas. Everything I’ve done… I did it for you. I would do anything to keep you and your family safe and happy, and I know I’ve failed you here, but I will fix it. I will, no matter what it takes.”

“If any of them are harmed…” Cas inhaled deeply. “You will _never_ hear from me again. So, for your own sake, you had better hope my wife and children are uninjured in every sense of the word.”

Dean nodded sheepishly, shrinking himself into his seat. He knew he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if Kelly, Jack, or the unborn child were harmed and he were to blame. If he were being honest, he likely wouldn’t be able to handle seeing Cas after something like that happened. He couldn’t bear the thought of them being hurt.

“I would never want any of them to be hurt, for _their_ sake. Not my own. I care deeply for your family,” Dean said, then he tugged a small sheet of paper out of his pocket to make sure he made the correct turns. Sure enough, it brought them right up to a warehouse lit up by nothing more than a single street light, flickering off and on in the dark of the night.

The breath hitched in Dean’s throat as he realized what he had to do next. No questions asked. His jaw quivered while he opened the door with his right hand and slowly stepped out, bending immediately to his knees with the keys in his hand. Just beneath the door to the car sat a box with black panels on the front and sides, and a shining silver lining on the corners. The top was a slightly darker silver, though it wasn’t noticeable in the dim flickering of the street lamp. He pushed the key to the box inside the keyhole and twisted, promptly pushing open the heavy lid to reveal a small Smith & Wesson revolver with a wooden handle and a metal frame and barrel.

For a moment, he stared at the gun with disgust. The last time he used one was back in France during the war, and he wasn’t sure he would ever be ready to use one again after that trip. But there were more important things at stake than his personal comfort, so he grabbed the gun, double checked that it was fully loaded, and shut the box. When he looked up again, Cas and Sam were both standing over him with worried looks on their faces.

“What are you planning to do, Dean…?” Sam asked.

He looked at him with sadness in his eyes. “What I have to.”

His friends exchanged a look but didn’t say a word.

“I need to go in first. I do not know if he will be armed, or how quick he will react if he is. There may only be one chance to take my shot and take him by surprise, so I need you to stay back until I give the go-ahead. That is very important, all right?” Dean said.

“Are you a good shot?” Cas asked with a pointed look at the gun.

“I spent a few years in the Great War and commanded my own battalion,” he reminded him then grimaced. “I can shoot a moving target from quite a ways away.”

Silently, Cas nodded his head and stepped forward to kiss Dean once on the cheek. “Be safe. If you don’t call for us in a few minutes, I’m coming in to look for you. Whether you like it or not.”

“That sounds fair to me. I will do my best to make quick work of him and to remove Jack and Kelly as quickly as possible. I’ll be back, I promise.”

With that, he spun around on his heels with the gun held tightly in his grip behind his back, then he made his way towards a small side door that lead into the warehouse. Dean checked that the door was unlocked — it was — before trying to tug the door open, testing if it would creak. The metal door barely made a noise when he opened it just enough to squeeze through, and he held onto it until it closed all the way. He found a support beam not too far from the door that he could hide himself behind while finding his bearings.

To his left there didn’t appear to be much except old shelves against the wall and a fallen ladder on the floor, but to his right there were two large staircases (one leading up while the other went to a basement) that he would be hesitant to set foot on. For the most part, the main floor of the building was empty, save for a few stray items or boxes here and there. No signs of either Kelly or Jack. Not until he heard the faintest of whimpers that he swore he could trace down the stairs.

Great. A heavy but silent sigh left his lips. The stairs would probably creak underneath his weight, and if they were anywhere within sight of the stairs, there would be no hope of sneaking in unannounced.

However, before he could make it to the top of the stairs, he heard a familiar throat clear and he spun around, keeping the gun out of view.

“Mr. Veila. What a pleasant surprise,” said a thick Scottish accent which he heard first, then he saw Crowley standing smugly with his arms crossed.

Dean’s jaw clenched. “Mr. MacLeod. I wasn’t expecting to see you up here.”

“I wasn’t expecting to see you here at all. I must say, I’m rather impressed you found me so fast. Tell me, how did you pull it off?”

“I’m not going to share such information.” He adjusted his grip on the gun. “What do you want from us?”

Crowley just smirked.

Dean looked at him up and down and side to side, trying to locate a weapon on him. When he didn’t see a gun in his possession, at least not within immediate reach, he drew his own in a flash and aimed it around the bridge of his nose. He wasted no time pulling the trigger, and by the time Crowley processed the gun pointed at his face, it was too late. The shorter man tried to reach for something in the waistband of his pants, but he didn’t stand a chance, and he collapsed to the ground with blood pouring down his face. Dean exhaled a shaky breath. He never wanted it to end this way, but the deed was done.

From downstairs, there was a scream, but he waited to go down. Before he could leave, he stepped closer, very slowly with his gun still drawn, and kicked the body. Thankfully, there was no sign of life, so he breathed out in relief and relaxed his shoulders.

“Kelly, Jack! I’m on my way, you’re safe now,” Dean shouted while running to the door from which he entered. “You guys can come in now!” He glanced at the two men standing just outside the door, then rushed back in, tossing his gun to the floor and racing down the questionable stairs without a second thought.

To the left of the stairs, there were two chairs sitting in the middle of the dark room, which Kelly and Jack were tied to. Jack had tears streaming down his face as he whispered, “Mommy, Daddy, please help,” repeatedly under his breath. Kelly’s face was also stained with tears, which he took note of as he cut the ropes off from her waist, wrists, and ankles.

“Jack? Jack, look at me,” Dean whispered while digging his pocket knife through her ropes. “It’s all right, Jack. Mommy is fine, and your daddy is on his way. Everything is okay. You are safe now. The bad man can’t hurt you anymore.”

A couple feet away, Jack sniffled but nodded a little, and—if he wasn’t mistaken—his sobs seemed to slow down. Just as he cut the last ropes away from Kelly, Sam, and Cas came rushing down the stairs and Cas immediately checked up on her, asking questions about how she thought the baby was doing. He overheard a couple comments about pains in her lower back that came every few minutes, and the baby was still moving. Cas seemed more relieved to hear about the movement than anything.

A few moments later, while Dean whispered a constant stream of reassurance to the toddler he was freeing from the ropes, the last set around his ankles fell to the ground and Dean helped him back to his feet. The little boy immediately threw his arms around Kelly’s legs, crying once again.

“You would likely be more comfortable at home,” Sam suggested while shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

Positioning both of her hands at the base of her swollen belly, Kelly shook her head. “Hospital, not home. I’m not feeling particularly fantastic, and as much as I may like to be home… now is not the time.” She grimaced but managed a tight smile through whatever pain she felt. Her knees wobbled, and it appeared that she nearly fell over from the pain, but she continued on. Much to Dean’s surprise, she didn’t seem terribly fazed by the obvious contractions plaguing her.

“Kelly…” he said. “Do you think you may be in labor?”

She scoffed, and her body relaxed when the wave of pain came to an end. “Have been for a few days now.”

“Shouldn’t you—”

“See a physician? I was planning on it several hours ago—in fact, I was at the telephone to call your home for Castiel—before I was so rudely interrupted.” If looks could kill, none of them stood a chance with Kelly. She didn’t know _who_ to be mad at, but the situation was entirely unacceptable and she was furious. Blowing a huff of air from her nose, she gripped her belly tight and made her way to the stairs. “Now, I need to get up these stairs before another one starts. The pains continue to grow worse and closer together, and—” She winced. “—if this is anything like Jack’s birth, it is happening very soon. He came quickly.”

The three men looked at each other and didn’t say another word.

“Somebody come help me,” she snapped, using one hand to grip the wobbly railing to the stairs.

Cas rushed over and hooked his arm around her waist to help support her, and she melted right into his touch, though still stumbling on the unsupported side. Dean rushed to that side and put his arm around her back in the same way, and it was as though all of her weight fell into their arms at once. Under her breath, she mumbled a couple apologies, but they were quick to reassure her and encourage her up the stairs that groaned beneath their weight. Dean glanced back to see Sam following close behind with Jack clinging to his neck like a monkey.

The trio took the stairs slowly and one at a time, though by the time a few minutes had passed and they were only halfway up the large staircase, Cas suggested speeding up before another wave of pain came. If they were as close as she said, his watch told him it was about that time.

Kelly’s eyebrows came together and her lips pursed together as she sent her husband a dangerous glare. “I can’t walk any faster, _darling_. Now, if you’d like to carry me, perhaps that would help, but—” It was too late. Her words were interrupted by a sudden shout of pain and her knees buckled and her legs shook. Dean and Cas struggled to hold her up before they adjusted their grips.

“I don’t mind carrying you,” Cas said, frowning.

Through her pain, she gave him a look as if to say, ‘ _what are you waiting for?’_ but she didn’t open her mouth. Still, Cas seemed to understand.

“Don’t let go of her yet, Dean.”

Though he hesitated just a minute to release his own grip on her waist, Cas finally let go and tucked his left arm behind her knees, positioning the right behind her back, then he instructed her to grab onto his neck. She did, much tighter than he expected, but he hoisted her into his arms easily.

A low groan left her lips and when Dean looked over at her, he noticed droplets of sweat brimming her forehead. He grabbed the burgundy pocket square from his suit and used it to wipe the sweat, offering her a smile that he was certain she didn’t notice. Tucking the square back in his pocket, he walked up the stairs by Cas’s side.

“Has your water broken yet, Kelly?” Dean asked when they made it all the way up the stairs, but she just glared at him for a minute, trying to catch her breath in a very brief pause between her contractions. The sensations overwhelmed her once again, though, and she tried to make herself smaller in Cas’s arms.  

Cas began to whisper something in her ear. Presumably, he was trying to calm her nerves, but she started snapping at him in response, indicating that it didn’t work.

“We need to get you to the hospital,” Dean said.

“There’s— _shit!”_ Kelly groaned and the echo bounced off the metal walls. Her husband stroked her sweaty hair. “—not time.”

It took a minute for Dean to process what that meant and when he did, the color drained from his face and suddenly, he felt faint. “I can do it,” he said.

Every pair of eyes in the room fell on him.

“I-I have helped deliver babies before. During the war, in the villages. I wasn’t a physician, but occasionally they needed assistance, and…” He swallowed hard.

As he spoke, Cas stared at him with disbelief shining in his blue eyes. “No. No way. You are not trained, we-we need a real physician.”

“I don’t think there is a choice, Cas, so unless you have any better ideas—”

“I do, in fact! Find a hospital where she can safely deliver our child!”

“ _Where?!_ We’re in the Valley of Ashes, hardly anywhere civilized, and it may be half an hour to the nearest hospital.”

Cas pursed his lips and looked at Kelly. She was crying and trembling from head to toe. “We must get somewhere more comfortable, then,” he decided.

“My car. Let me… you take her out there, all right? I will meet you in a minute.”

Without hesitation, Cas rushed off with her towards the doors they entered and Dean ran to the stack of boxes in the corner of the room. Shuffling through the boxes, he tried to find a few that were approximately the size of his back seat and as clean as possible. It may have been four years since he last helped a delivery, but he remembered it as a messy process. Hopefully, cardboard would help absorb some of that mess. It wouldn’t be the most comfortable birth, but it would have to do.

Once he had an armful of flattened boxes, he jogged outside and dug the keys to his car out of his pocket. Kelly was standing against the yellow body of the car, hyperventilating, while Cas stood a few feet away with Jack, unsure of what to do.

Dean unlocked the back seat of his car then laid the flat boxes across the back seat of the car. He stepped away to grab onto Kelly and help her into the car where she leaned back against the door behind her, propping her knees up.

“Are you sure you’re okay with me doing this, Kelly?” He whispered, passing his burgundy handkerchief to her.

A short laugh left her lips that sounded more desperate than humorous. She wiped the sweat from her forehead. “I hardly have a choice at this point. Sam has no children, and Castiel knows nothing about childbirth.”

He stayed silent when he nodded his head before propping his foot up on the seat and unlacing his shoe, pulling the shoelace out entirely. He set it aside for later. Then, Dean shrugged off his baby pink suit jacket and unbuttoned his matching waistcoat, giving himself room to breathe while allowing Kelly a moment of privacy to ready herself.

“I am sorry I don’t have towels,” he offered. “The boxes will hopefully absorb some of the mess, but—”

Before he could finish, she cried out in pain again and began yelling.

“All right, all right… breathe in, Kelly, and breathe out. You will have your baby in your arms very soon, and it will be all over,” he tried to soothe her, reaching forward to take her hand which she immediately squeezed. He couldn’t help grimacing as she crushed his fingers, but he continued to encourage her to remember to breathe through the pain.

Not quite a minute had passed when she whimpered, “I can’t do it. I-I can’t—” A sob left her lips and he brushed the sweaty hair out of her eyes.

Dean held her hand between both of his and smiled warmly. “Yes, you can. You already grew this child inside of you; this is the shortest part of it all. Think of the very first moment you heard Jack cry, when you held him in your arms, all right?”

That brought the slightest smile to her face. Outside the car, they could hear Jack giggling as he played with his father, and Kelly nodded as if to say, “I’ve got this.”

Just as that contraction came to an end, another one began, causing a string of swears to leave her lips. Dean laughed for a moment until she kicked him to shut him up. He returned to the encouragement instead.

After a few minutes and a couple more contractions, she seemed to relax a little. The pain seemed to be better, which meant…

“This is it. You’re going to push when y—”

“I know how to deliver a baby.” Kelly glared at him.

Dean’s cheeks flushed a bit, but he settled into a seated position at her feet.

According to his watch, two minutes passed before she began to push with all of her might. Her loud groans filled the air, and her grip on his hand tightened once again. After sixty seconds, she stopped to catch her breath. Four minutes later, she began to push again — this time, for closer to a minute and a half.

By the end of the second contraction, the head started to show. She reached down to brush her fingers across the head and through her tears and sweat and exhaustion, she smiled.

The process continued for a few more cycles until the largest part of the head was showing, and—just as the physicians in France taught him—he encouraged her to slow down on the pushing.

“You’ve nearly made it, Kelly,” Dean said. “A few more… and he or she will be in your arms. Breathe for now.”

He reached forward to take his handkerchief off of her stomach, using it to wipe her forehead. When the next contraction came, he encouraged her through it with only light pushing, and continued with this until the body began to come out. She changed to pushing with all her energy while Dean held his arms beneath the head to catch the baby.

“One more time!” He exclaimed, resting the jacket to his suit on his lap, then he took hold of the baby to finish the job with her final push.

A shrill cry filled the air as he began to wipe the baby down with the jacket.

“It’s a girl. A daughter.”

Dean took the shoelace from before into his hands and tied it around the umbilical cord, about half an inch from the belly button, while cradling the newborn in his lap. Once he cut it with his pocket knife, he wrapped her in the pastel pink jacket and passed her to Kelly.

Tears welled in the mother’s eyes as she brought the infant to her chest. Her nose pressed against the top of her soft head and she laughed breathlessly.

“Tell Cas.”  She kissed her daughter’s head. “I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”

The corners of Dean’s lips curled up into a smile and in any other situation, he would have vehemently denied the tears forming in his eyes, but he allowed them to fall down his cheeks this time.

He wiped the tears away then popped his head out of the open top of the car. “Cas, she’s here. Your daughter.”

Immediately, Cas perked up, hoisting Jack into his arms and rushing over to the car. Dean leaned against the back of the seats in the front of the car, watching as the family climbed in and sat close to them.

Hesitation seemed to stop Cas from brushing his fingertips against his daughter’s rosy cheeks, but Kelly nudged his fingers closer and a bright grin spread across his face. “What should we call her?” He whispered.

She thought for a moment, sitting up on the seat and rocking her gently. “I’m fond of the name Claire.”

“What about…” His blue eyes met Dean’s green eyes. “Claire Mary Kline?”

Dean nearly choked on a sob. Kelly stared down at her baby with a love that rivaled no other, and all she did was smile.

Out of nowhere, Jack shrieked and tried to climb onto his mother’s lap, who laughed and encouraged him closer. His father helped him into her lap, then—with extreme caution—she passed Claire to Cas. She wrapped her arms around her son to pull him close.

“I want Jack to hold her,” Kelly said, holding her arms out so she could cradle the baby once again. “Jack, sweetheart, hold on to my arms. This… this is your sister.”

He stared at her with wide eyes that were so much like his father’s, so wild and bright and full of hope, then he followed her directions. Cas placed Claire in their arms, holding her head just in case, and Kelly took her into her arms.

“Dean… quit your staring and sit,” she instructed.

Dean watched for a moment as the three of them held the newborn baby together before he took a seat by Cas. As he brushed his finger along the baby’s cheek, she gripped the finger with her little hands, and he knew for the first time what it meant to have a family.

Kelly’s eyes stayed soft as she looked down at Jack, who touched his sister’s nose with more caution than a three-year-old should have been capable of, and she whispered, “Welcome to the family, Claire Mary Kline.”


	8. epilogue.

THIRTEEN MONTHS LATER

“Jack? Jack, where do you think you are going?” Dean’s voice echoed through the front room of his house, along with the pitter-patter of little footsteps and the uncontrollable giggling that accompanied it. 

The toddler shrieked with joy. Dean continued to chase after him, ducking into his family room to peek behind the sofa. 

“Jacqueline Marie Kline, where on Earth have you disappeared to?” He called out in an exaggerated tone. 

Immediately, a gasp of shock came from Jack’s mouth and he popped his head out of a wooden toy box that he had climbed into. “Hey! That’s not my name, old sports!”

Dean raised his eyebrows. He ran towards the box with the lid open and grabbed the boy underneath his arms, hoisting him up onto his hip. “Old sports? Is that so?” With both of his eyebrows quirked still, he leaned forward and blew a razz against Jack’s cheek. 

The boy squealed in delight, mimicking the noise best he could with his tongue. That only worked to cover Dean in his spit, but he didn’t mind. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a blonde little girl toddling into the room, babbling to herself while clutching a doll in her arms. When she saw them playing, she turned to try walking towards them, wobbling with her every step. 

Claire stumbled and tripped as she walked. Before she could fall flat on her face, Dean scooped her into his other arm and littered her face in kisses. She giggled and hooked her arms around his neck tightly. 

“Whoa… whoa! Hold on, now. Too… heavy…  _ ah! _ ” He pretended to stumble around clumsily, ultimately ‘falling’ onto the couch with both kids sitting on his chest. Both of them screamed at the top of their lungs before bursting out into fits of giggles. They climbed up and down him like the playground in his backyard. Jack tried to jump on his chest, but Dean quickly shut that down by tickling his sides with one hand and blowing razz’s all over him.

Across the room, Dean barely noticed Cas standing against the wall with a smile on his face and admiration in his eyes. Kelly was sitting not too far away to keep an eye on them, sipping a cup of steaming tea. Despite what their calm demeanors may suggest, the shrieking continued to bounce off the walls of the room for as long as he continued playing with the children.

Dean smiled. It was amazing to consider how his priorities changed in the span of a year. His bustling parties came to an end ten months before and, even though there were fewer people than ever in his home on weekends like this, it never felt as full as it did when the Kline family came to visit. When  _ his _ family came to visit. 

A chubby little hand shoving its way into his mouth tore him out of his thoughts. “Claire… now, just  _ what _ are you thinking?” As a playful smirk toyed on his lips, he took her wrist between his fingers and pretended to eat the small hand, grinning from ear to ear as he did. 

Between her giggles, Claire yelled out, “ _ Dee! _ ” 

When he pulled her hand away from his mouth, Dean kissed the top of her head. “Go find your mother. Dee needs to prepare for this afternoon, all right?” He lifted them off of his lap one at a time then made his way over to Cas, who greeted him with a quick kiss. 

“Sam is waiting for you, and Gabe for me. I’ve already removed my suit and everything else I may need from our room so you may ready yourself in peace,” Cas said. 

Dean hooked an arm around his waist, leading him out of the family room with his head resting against his shoulder, and twisted the ring on his right little finger with his thumb. “I would happily be interrupted by you, darling.” 

As they made their way up the stairs, he laughed. It was music to Dean’s ears. 

“I know you would. But I reckon you would be quite distracted, if I know you as well as I believe, which is  _ why _ I will wait to see you until they have given us the cue.”

All he did was huff in response. Then, when they reached the top of the stairs, he grabbed Cas by the hips and pulled him in for a passionate kiss. One of Cas’s hand found a place on the nape of his neck, fingers tangled in his hair, while the other held onto his hip. He couldn’t help but laugh against his lips, pulling away to meet his eyes. 

“I am not changing my mind. I divorced Kelly for this reason, and I will do it right. Sam has already received instructions from me, and… he listens to me. He knows how important today is,” Cas said. 

As it turned out, not even the pout on Dean’s face would make him change his mind. He sighed in defeat. “All right. Only because I love you, though. I will see you soon.” 

They kissed one more time then went their separate ways. Dean made his way into his bedroom, knocking twice before his closest friend swung the door open and greeted him with a tight hug. 

“Happy to see you, too, old sport! What do I need to do to be ready?” 

Sam didn’t hesitate to grab a sheet of paper off of the vanity near the doors of the bedroom and his eyes scanned over the list thoughtfully. 

It took a few minutes before he cleared his throat and spoke up. “According to the list  _ you _ had me write—with Kelly’s assistance, of course—you should begin with ‘something old’.”

_ Something old… _ Dean rushed across the room and shuffled through the drawers of his desk until he pulled out an old photo book. He flipped through the yellowed pages full of newspaper clippings, photographs, letters, and keepsakes from his time with Castiel. 

“What should it be? It needs to fit in one of my pockets,” Dean wondered. 

As Sam’s fingers grazed over the pages he began to flip through, they eventually found a place on a letter dated ‘17 July 1919’. 

“When did this return to your possession?” he asked. 

There was a pause as Dean thought back. “Gabriel returned it to me after you had tea. It has certainly made its rounds, hasn’t it? Cas received it on his wedding day, but as the story goes, Gabriel took possession of it so it wasn’t ruined by Cas’s hysterics. Gabriel brought it to your tea, yes? He told me of it at the party where I met you. And after I had dinner with Gabriel later that week, he gave me the letter — the first time I saw it since I wrote it, by the way.”

“I reckon that should be the ‘something old’ you carry, then.” 

“You think so, old sport?” 

Sam nodded, so Dean took the letter into his hand and folded it into a nice square before he placed it on top of the desk. 

“What’s next?”

His gaze returned to the list. “Something new.” 

Dean’s mind went blank, as if he’d owned nothing new in his life. Perhaps his jitters were simply getting the best of him, because Sam smacked him on the side of his head and stared at him like he was an idiot. 

“What?” 

“Your new cufflinks. The initials read DK instead of DV, do they not?” 

_ Of course! _ How could he forget about those? They would be the biggest surprise he had waiting to show Cas. “Perfect. Next is... something borrowed?”

Before Sam could answer, Dean wandered off to a small wooden box he had sitting near his bed. He didn’t open it immediately, preparing himself with a few deep breaths. 

_ “Keep these for your wedding, Dennis,” _ his mother had told him only days before her death. His father had ultimately been the one to give him the box before he left home, and there were keepsakes from both of them inside the mahogany box. 

_ Inhale.  _ He paused.  _ Exhale _ . 

Then he opened the box. A small string of pearls sat inside, along with a few old photographs of his parents, but at the bottom, he found what he was looking for: A silver charm bracelet with a note tied to it with twine. 

He picked up the bracelet and read the note. 

_ ‘Something borrowed. Your mother would have wanted this in your possession for your big day. Remember to return it. Lots of love, Dad.’ _

The charms dangling from the bracelet would have made anybody else look twice, but Dean knew his mother always found fascination in belief systems around the world. She showed this in her favorite charm bracelet that she loved dearly. 

Carefully, he untied the twine from the bracelet and laid the note in the box. He hooked the bracelet around his wrist. When he looked up, Sam had his curious gaze glued on the box, but his eyes moved to meet Dean’s after only a moment. 

“The last thing…” Sam started. 

“Something blue,” they said in unison, and Dean ran to the memory book sitting on his desk. 

He grabbed a few pages at a time, flipping until he reached the last page, then he took hold of the blue hydrangea, dried and preserved in that very book. “It’s from last summer. When we went to your place and he came over for tea, I had hydrangeas from my greenhouses. Blue, purple, white, yellow… Orchids, too, but nothing blue.” 

“You saved a flower from that afternoon?” 

“A few.” He marched across the room to set the hydrangea beside the letter, beaming with pride when he turned back to his friend. “It’s really happening today. He… he’s risked everything for me, and he has yet to regret it.” 

The words hung in the air for a moment as Sam found a seat at the foot of the bed and Dean made his way up the stairs.

“I’m happy for you,” Sam said after a moment. 

Dean stood in front of the mirror against his wall to run a pomade through his hair so it looked just right, and he couldn’t hide the grin on his face. “I’m glad I listened to you, old sport.” 

A content sigh left his lips as he finished his hair. Sam already laid his outfit on the bed, so he grabbed the new cufflinks from a velvet box on a shelf and dashed down the stairs to dress himself. 

First came his powder blue shirt that buttoned all the way to his neck and a white pair of trousers. Next, he wrapped the golden tie around his neck and brought it into a simple yet elegant Windsor knot. He slipped a metal bar through the holes in his collar underneath his tie to lift the knot and smiled to himself when he finished. 

The suspenders laying on his bed were white and, upon further inspection, he realized he had never seen them before. Before he had the chance to ask about them, Sam spoke up. “A gift. I’m not at liberty to say from whom, but they are brand new.” 

Who the hell…? A million thoughts raced through his mind. Why would he have a secret gift-giver? Especially for this day! He already knew everybody who would be there. It was a private ceremony with only their closest friends and family to avoid any backlash — legal or otherwise. Not that it was  _ technically _ illegal; they only called it a wedding, but never claimed for it to hold any legal or religious groundings. 

He had to shake the thoughts out of his head. None of them would have told anybody who shouldn’t know, and he tried to get that through his brain as he hooked the suspenders to his pants. 

Ten minutes passed before Dean finished dressing himself. Once he finally did, he took the letter and flower and slipped them behind his tawny brown handkerchief. His mother’s old charm bracelet dangled beneath his sleeve, but his wristwatch stopped it from showing. He took one more look down at himself, spinning the new cufflinks absently, then turned his attention to Sam. 

“Do I appear ready?” Dean asked, nerves obvious in his voice. 

“More than ready. How do you feel?” 

A slow exhale left his lips while he considered the question. His fingers tapped against his leg. “I… I feel excited. I know this may not change anything, but I have wanted a wedding for as long as I can remember. Originally as a show of wealth, but now… it is all for love.” 

Sam chuckled, resting a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “That is how it should be. You’ve matured greatly in the last year, and—” before he could finish his sentence, two raps on his wooden bedroom door interrupted and he frowned. 

A knot twisted in his stomach, and he felt like he would hurl. Was it time already? The breath hitched in his throat. It seemed Sam noticed the panic welling up inside of Dean, because he placed a hand on each of his shoulders and looked into his green eyes. 

“You have yet to quit speaking of this moment for six months now. Not to mention, you have been waiting for this for six years.  _ Years _ , Dean! The love of your life is just down those stairs, waiting to tell the entire world how much he loves you. You have made it this far already,” Sam insisted. 

The words slowly sunk in. This day would be an accumulation of everything he’d worked so hard to achieve since he was eighteen. Sure, he had lost some people along the way, but he gained a family, and that was more than he had ever hoped for. 

A silence hung in the air as his breath quivered. Dean remembered telling Sam many months ago that his life… it had to keep going up. Part of him always worried that a wedding would be the climax of his story and everything else would be downhill. But when he saw their faces in his mind, he knew that couldn’t be possible. His family would continue to bring joy to his life until the day he died. 

Finally, Dean brought himself to nod. “Okay,” he agreed. 

With a smile on his face, Sam spun on his heels and pulled open one of the large bedroom doors. 

A figure with dark hair slowly came into view and Dean’s knees buckled. Blood rushed out of his head and once again, he felt dizzy. It would have been impossible for Dean to mistake him as somebody else, even through seven years of aging. He would recognize the sadness haunting those green eyes anywhere.

The man in the doorway apparently felt similarly. Adorned in a classic black and white tuxedo, he moved forward with hesitation, and Dean did the same. 

They met halfway. Two work-calloused hands reached up to cradle the younger man’s face as if to observe him. 

“You look like your mother,” whispered a raspy voice that brought tears to Dean’s eyes. 

“Dad…?” 

He raised his eyebrows, as if to say  _ ‘and what of it?’  _ Then he moved his hands to punch Dean in the shoulder with a sharp glare. “You didn’t write me a single letter, Dennis. Seven years. I could have been dead!”

Immediately, he looked to the floor. Guilt flooded over him. “I didn’t think…” 

“That’s right, boy. You didn’t think,” John scolded. “Luckily, I am  _ not _ dead and I’m here now. You prepared for this?” 

Hope flickered in Dean’s eyes. “Are… are you all right with this? With my family?”

John grunted but clapped him on the back, leading him out of the bedroom and down the hall. “You’re my kin. And regardless, your mother would have killed me if I’d missed today,” he said gruffly. It was a better answer than Dean had been expecting, so he would not complain.

As they rounded the corner out of the hallway and to the top of the stairs, Dean froze. Mr. Shurley offered to play the organ for the ceremony, and when he heard the music, it all felt surreal.

A few feet from the bottom of the stairs, he caught sight of Cas. He looked wonderful in his lavender suit, somehow even more so than when he wore it sixteen months ago. Dean could hardly breathe, let alone walk — but his father was there to elbow his side and nudge him along. 

Flower petals of various colors covered the walkway, from the bottom of the stairs to Cas’s feet. Claire stood off to the side with a basket in her arm that wasn’t clutching Kelly’s leg, beaming with pride at Dean. On her other side, Jack stood holding a pillow draped with white silk, two gold rings sitting on top. Warmth filled his heart, but he continued walking. 

Only a few paces later, the father-son duo reached Cas, who whispered something in John’s ear. The two laughed together under their breath, then John released Dean’s arm and retreated to the side. 

Gabe — who, of course, needed to officiate — gave the couple a second to take in the moment. Once they seemed settled, he began the ceremony. 

Much to Dean’s relief, Gabe stayed mostly on script with the traditional but situationally appropriate introduction, sprinkling a bit of humor into it that only Sam seemed to truly appreciate. Perhaps he mistook the smile on Dean’s face for amusement at his jokes, but it hardly mattered. 

Before he knew what was happening, Cas had taken his hand while reciting short vows on how deeply he loved him. Eagerly, he promised to stay by his side through any number of things they may go through as a couple and as a family. Before they could get too misty-eyed, he let out a short laugh and slipped a gold wedding band onto Dean’s left hand. 

Through Dean’s own vows, he had to wipe tears away from his eyes a few times. 

“I remember—if I may stray from my vows for but a moment—I remember that very first night, Cas, as if it was yesterday. When you brought me to your bedroom to simply get away: Away from the noise, the chaos, the party,” he recalled with a sweet laugh. “My heart beat faster and faster as your face came up to mine. I just knew that when I kissed you and forever wed my unutterable visions to your perishable breath… my mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So I waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then I kissed you. At my lips’s touch, you blossomed for me like a flower and the incarnation was complete. From that exact instant, I have never been the same man as I was before. I would search the driest deserts, the darkest forests, and the deepest waters if it meant I would find you.”

A smile crinkled the corners of his eyes and he took the other golden ring off Jack’s white silk pillow, who then rushed off to stand by his mother. 

Wiping his eyes with the handkerchief in his pocket, Dean finished his vows as they were written. Green eyes met blue as he twisted the ring onto Cas’s finger and then locked their hands together. 

“I am ecstatic to be your husband,” Dean whispered in his ear, then Cas pulled him into a loving kiss. They laughed at the scattered sound of cheers in the room, parting after only a few moments. 

From his spot at Kelly’s side, Jack dropped the silk pillow in his hands and ran towards them at top speed. The sudden force of a four-year-old slamming into his legs nearly sent Dean toppling over. Luckily, Cas was there to grab his hips and prevent a slip. 

“Dee! Dee, I want lunch!” Jack exclaimed, jumping into his arms. 

On instinct, he grabbed onto the little boy by the waist to raise him off the ground, then he tossed him into the air — just a few inches above his hands, but enough to make him scream delightedly. 

“I believe...” Dean lifted him above his head to sit on his shoulders. “You are capable of waiting. Your Uncle Sam asked to speak, and I reckon Dee doesn’t have much of a choice but to listen!” 

Jack giggled. “I can wait,” he agreed. 

When he looked down next, Dean saw Kelly standing at his side with Claire. His father had moved to stand behind him, with Chuck beside him, and Gabe stood at the left side of the group — presumably to view his boyfriend as well as possible. Dean’s heart swelled in his chest and he rested his head against his new husband’s shoulder. 

A couple feet in front of them, Sam stood in a simple suit, wearing a bright smile on his face. “I must begin with a brief congratulation to the grooms,” he offered. 

Dean flickered his green eyes up, staring at Cas with admiration before turning to Sam. “Thank you, old sport.” 

After grinning at them, Sam looked at the broader audience he would speak to. “It has been my utmost pleasure to watch Cas and Dean’s relationship strengthen before my very eyes. Castiel, you may know, is none other than a cousin to me — one who I look up to in every sense but the physical. Though we maintained our familial relationship merely through letters for years, he welcomed me to New York with such open arms upon my arrival. And Mr. Veila… or Mr. Kline, now… what a wonderful fella he is! We met last year as the trees bore their first fruits of the summer. I remember clearly the first time I saw him, though he didn’t see me. I could tell, even in the dark, dead of night, he was longing for something. He reached out, as if trying to grasp a missing piece of him. This was a man who had lost something, and that something—near as I could tell—was an inconspicuous light at the end of a dock across the great Manhasset Bay.

“Of course, I later came to understand the true meaning of that green light. It represented all he had lost, everything he found the determination to gain once again, and each sacrifice he made to reach that goal. Even before they reunited by my own hands, Dean believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… And then one fine morning—So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”


End file.
